


The Absence of Light

by northernexposure



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Feels, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 10:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northernexposure/pseuds/northernexposure
Summary: He was not the only inhabitant of this cell. Another take on an old FF cliché.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More archiving from 2014, this time of a long-form story with a good dose of action/adventure as well as J/C. It also features one of my favourite scenes I've ever written for Janeway. Beta'd by the ever-excellent MissyHissy3.

He woke to darkness and a throbbing head that gave rise to a reflexive frown. Chakotay felt the motion tug at his forehead, releasing a vicious lance of pain. He lifted a hand and cautiously probed the spot, wincing as his fingers connected with swollen skin. Something flaked as he dropped his hand: dried blood around a self-sealed cut. He sat up, slowly, waiting for the nausea to hit. It washed about his gut like juice in a bottle. He swallowed and breathed deeply, slowly, willing it to subside. The sickness slid away from him, fading along with the sudden visual cacophony of coloured lights that sparked in his dimmed vision. Whatever trouble he'd encountered had delivered a mean blow.

He'd been lying on his back on a low metal bunk. There were no springs to creak as he sat up and no padding to soften where he'd been lying. From these things coupled with the lack of light and the damp, putrid smell hanging in the cold room around him, Chakotay deduced that he was not being held out of kindness. He reached for his communicator, unsurprised when it turned out to be absent from its usual place on his uniform jacket.

Blinking, Chakotay realised that the darkness was not as absolute as he had first supposed. There was a faint hint of grey delineating what must be the door to the cell. As his eyes adjusted, the light was just enough to make out rough shapes. The room was square. The bunk he lay on filled almost the entirety of one wall, and fitted his frame with a few centimetres to spare. Two meters, he guessed, give or take. Two other walls – the one that housed the door and the one closest to where his head had been when he'd regained consciousness – seemed to be bare, nothing on them or in front of them. But standing at right angles from the toe of the bunk on which he sat stood another, also pushed up against the wall. There was a huddled mass heaped on top of it.

He was not the only inhabitant of this cell.

Chakotay tried to stand, and quickly realised that the ceiling was too low for him to do so without a stoop. He moved to the second bunk and dropped to his knees instead. It was too dark to see who the figure was. The body was silent, so silent that he thought there was a good possibility that whoever lay there was dead.

He reached out a hand, cautiously feeling for the body. He connected with what seemed to be a limb – an arm, perhaps. "Hey," Chakotay said, quietly, squeezing gently in the hope that the pressure would be enough to elicit a response. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing. He ran his hand lightly down the limb, finding a hand that felt distinctly humanoid. There was a thready pulse throbbing in the wrist. Whoever this was, they were alive.

"I need you to wake up." Chakotay tried again. "Can you open your eyes?"

Nothing.

Was this another _Voyager_ crewmember? Who had he been with when this – whatever this was – had happened? His memory was void, a dark mass that he could not penetrate. Reaching out his other hand, Chakotay moved it up the unknown arm until he reached a shoulder, noting that the limb was, though muscled, pretty slim. A woman, perhaps, or an adolescent? At the shoulder, his fingers brushed through a filigree of hair. He leaned closer, trying to make out the face, but the scant light was not enough to see by.

He traced his fingers from shoulder to neck, and then felt for the outline of clothing, connecting with what he thought could be a rollneck and the edge of a collarless jacket. He was almost certain this was a member of his crew. Chakotay searched for the pips, fingers brushing against cold skin. He found them, counting the nubs from left to right.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Four._

"Kathryn…"

Chakotay sprang from his knees to sit beside her on the narrow bunk. His fingers left her neck and trailed up into her hair, looking for an injury that would match his own. He found it at her temple, the seep of blood still sticky above her ear. A new wave of nausea bubbled in his gut and he leaned closer, turning his ear to her mouth until her nose brushed his cheekbone. He could hear her breathing now – thin and laboured. Barely there.

He leaned back and ran his hands down to her shoulders, gripping as firmly as he dared.

"Wake up," he said, speaking close to her face. "Captain, you've got to wake up."

The act of leaning forward caused his own injury to throb anew. Chakotay battled down the sickness in his throat. His heart rate had hitched the moment he'd realised who was here with him – an attack on a first officer could be construed merely as serendipity for a passing hostile race, but to take the two senior officers from one small and unknown ship? Until he knew otherwise he had to assume that was calculated, which meant it was likely _Voyager_ and her entire crew were in danger.

His first thoughts were for _Voyager_. His second were for the woman lying below him. Chakotay had taken his fair share of knocks in his time and this one had obviously been enough to fell him in his tracks. Janeway was no stranger to close-quarters combat – she'd told him stories about going up against the Cardassians that would chill the blood of many a prizefighter he'd known back home. But she'd taken a blow to the temple that was likely just as hard as the one that had laid him out cold, and for all the steel of her demeanour she was smaller and slighter than he.

She had to wake up, and she had to wake up now.

Chakotay went to touch her cheek, but in the darkness found his fingers against her lips instead. He jumped and jerked his hand away, and then cursed himself for being an idiot. He gripped her shoulders again, resisting the sudden urge to shake her awake just to hear her voice. Who knew what other injuries she had?

"Captain. Wake up. Come on – I know you can hear me, Kathryn. Wake up."

He spoke to her for what seemed like hours, but in reality it was probably only a few minutes. The moan, when it came, was so faint he almost missed it. Almost, but not quite.

"Kathryn?" Chakotay brushed a thumb over her cheek, and felt her move, groaning. She turned on her side, away from him, her uniform rustling as she pulled her legs up, curling into the foetal position.

He reached out a hand, looking for her arm. He found what felt like her waist instead. "Captain…"

When she finally came around, she jerked awake with alarming speed. Janeway gasped, turning on her back and then moving to sit. Chakotay slipped off the bunk to allow her room, resuming a crouch beside it, one hand finding and gripping her arm.

"Slowly," he warned, "take it easy, you've-"

"What happened?" she rasped, and the relief he felt at hearing her voice was a physical taste in his mouth.

"I don't know, but you're hurt – we both are," he said. "And you need to take it easy, because-"

He felt her move as she tried to stand up. Chakotay went with her, shoulders bent so as not to hit his head on the ceiling of their prison. He kept hold of her arm, knowing what was coming next.

"Oh – god –" Kathryn retched, an awful wet heaving. He moved her towards the wall nearest the door, anxious not to have her vomit in the centre of a tiny cell they could be in for who knew how long. She crumpled to her knees and he stayed beside her as the sound of bile spattering onto the stone floor echoed into his ears. An acrid, sour smell added to the fetid odour of the room and he fought the urge to vomit himself, turning his nose into her shoulder as he held her up. Under his hands, Janeway shuddered. A few minutes later, he felt her lift her hand to her mouth.

"I'm sorry," she said, shakily.

"There's nothing to apologise for," he told her, helping her to stand. They moved back to her bunk and sat side by side in silence.

"Where are we?" she asked, eventually, her voice quiet. He could imagine how her head was throbbing: his was, too.

"I don't know."

"Do we know who our captors are? What they want?"

"No. I only came around a few minutes before you did. Can you remember anything? About how we came to be here?"

"No…" He felt something brushing against his arm, and realised it was her hand. She gripped his bicep, squeezing gently. "Chakotay? You said you were hurt," she said.

"A blow to the head, but nothing to worry about," Chakotay assured her. "I'm more worried about you. I think you took a harsher knock than I did."

"I'm all right."

In the dark, thirsty, hurting, desperate for fresh air, he smiled. What else would she say?

[TBC]


	2. Chapter 2

The dark was cloying. Kathryn Janeway had never suffered with claustrophobia, but this absence of light was relentless. It clawed its way towards her, creeping up her back, working over her shoulders until her throat was tight, dry not only with thirst but also with tension. It was impossible to keep track of time. The notion of minutes, of hours, became alien. There was only the rawness of _now_ coupled with the agony of _later_.

They talked. It helped. The sound of Chakotay's steady voice held her in check, floating across the well of crippling darkness that constituted the tiny distance between their bunks. Whether hers did the same for him, she had no idea. Janeway had the sense that her first officer was better equipped to cope with a situation like this than she was. She had observed first hand his ability to accept enforced inaction: he found a way to placate any restlessness, a knack she had never managed to acquire. Quite apart from the dislocating effect of utter darkness, the stillness stymied her: Kathryn found it hard enough to evade thought even when she had an agenda longer than there were hours in the day in which to fulfil it. Here, in the dark, with nothing to occupy her, thoughts broke over her like waves thrown ashore from a stormy ocean.

The crew – were they alive? Dead? Imprisoned in similar circumstances? Where was _Voyager_? How had they ended up here? Where _was_ here? What did their captors want?

Some of these questions formed the basis of their conversations. Without evidence of who they were being held by and where, the only answers they could give themselves were the product of educated guesswork. There was no way to know what had happened to the ship, and no matter how many times Kathryn attempted to stray in that direction, Chakotay would steer her away – worried, perhaps, that she would do herself more harm than good to dwell upon something they could never know the truth of while in that cell.

"It must be for ransom," she'd said, as they had tried to work out the reason for their capture. "We're not dead. They haven't tried to interrogate us for information. So why else take us? Why else keep us alive?"

Chakotay had agreed. "A reasonable assumption."

"Which would suggest," she had continued, "that there is someone to request ransom from."

"Perhaps," had been his cautious reply.

"That could only mean _Voyager_," she had pointed out, her heart swelling with a sudden rush of relief at the sense this made. If they were being held for ransom, then it stood to reason that the ship was still intact, and also still at liberty.

"You could be right, Captain," Chakotay had said. "And yet they haven't fed us or given us water. They left us in here with injuries that were pretty severe, after all. They're not acting as if they're worried about keeping us alive."

"Perhaps they don't know our needs," she reasoned, unwilling to let go of the wisp of hope that had wound its way around her heart. "Their species may not require hydration in the way that we do."

They had hammered on the door, yelling their needs, but no answer had been forthcoming - at least, not immediately. An age later, a hatch in their prison opened; grey light illuminating a small oblong cut into the wall beside the door. Through it was pushed something – a tray, bearing what may or may not have been intended as food, from the smell of it. The hatch shut swiftly, snatching back the light. Janeway heard Chakotay moving, down on his hands and knees, crawling carefully towards the offering, searching for it in the space left against their retina as a memory of light.

"Captain," he said, his voice hoarse. "There is a container here…"

She could smell the scent of water as he scraped open the lid, and had she been anyone else she may have wept at the relief of it. Absolute silence followed. In the darkness, he could have been doing anything. She thought, for a single wild, insane, impossible second, that he was no longer there at all.

"Chakotay?"

"Just making sure it _is _water, Captain."

It was. They drank, trying not to be greedy, trying to ration what they took.

Their memories had returned – not lost, as first feared, but merely mired in the pain of concussion. Slowly, they had both recovered, and as their pain had receded, comprehension had rushed back in to fill the void. Not that it did either of them much good: they recalled _Voyager_'s stop at a trading colony, but little more than that. There had been no sense of foreboding, no veiled warnings of the trouble to come.

Perhaps, Janeway mused, that should have been warning enough.

When the thoughts would not leave her alone, when they were too tired to talk or sleep, she paced. Back and forth from her bunk to the wall, over and over as if the space were longer than the five paces it took her to cross it.

"Kathryn." His voice would rise around her, a susurration in the darkness that was far more eloquent than the scant shape of her name itself.

And so she would stop awhile. She'd sit on her bunk, hands gripping at the metal edge, imagining how her knuckles would have turned white with the pressure if she could see them. She tried to devise new methods of escape, though there was only the door and that had proven to be impenetrable despite their best efforts and a hatch through which was pushed, at irregular intervals, their food and water.

There was really only one reason to be thankful of the dark. It preserved the last of their dignity: there was no latrine and therefore they were forced to improvise. She turned her bed on its side, pushing the metal bunk against the wall so that its legs were braced against the floor at an angle, forming a 'V', which would have to do.

He would not allow her to sleep on the floor, and she refused to deprive him of his bunk. The solution was to take shifts. One would sleep, squashed against the wall to make room for the other to sit on the space that was left.

She sat next to him while he slept on his side, his thighs pressing against the small of her back. She calmed herself by listening to his breathing. She passed the time by inhaling and exhaling in synchrony, until they were breathing as one.

[TBC]


	3. Chapter 3

He meditated, though it was a solace he sought only sparsely and usually only when he could be sure that Janeway was asleep. Chakotay was all too aware that in taking himself out to that place at the bare edges of his consciousness, he was leaving her behind. Leaving her alone, in their pitch black, inescapable, stinking cell. He had tried to help her meditate too, so that her own spirit guide might ease her anxiety, but without success.

"I can't, Chakotay," she said, as their latest – last – attempt failed. Her voice broke roughly against the close walls of their prison as she moved abruptly away, her presence receding in the dark. "I just… can't."

He reached out to find her hand, working his way up her arm until he gripped her shoulder with a pressure calculated to offer comfort. He understood. This was a ritual he had known since childhood, and yet there had been a long period when he himself had been unable to settle into its rhythms. Yes, Chakotay understood perfectly the tumult of an unquiet spirit.

_She's losing weight,_ he thought to himself as his hand slipped away, an imaginary imprint of the hard press of her bony clavicle against his fingers. _But then, so am I._

They played word games. They told stories – conjuring imaginary sights to compensate for what they lacked in reality. Janeway started it in a move that surprised him, not so much for the request itself, but for what it alluded to.

'Tell me a story, Commander – I seem to remember you're good at that."

He let a pause develop for a moment. "A story, Captain?"

"Yes," she said, and the sudden hesitance in her voice had made him wish for enough light to see her expression. "Please, Chakotay. Tell me a story of your people. There must be real ones."

So he did. He spun a yarn about the first winter, an allegory for the promise of renewal that lay beneath even the most frozen of ground. When he'd finished, she stayed silent so long that he wondered if she'd gone to sleep. Her voice, when it filtered to him through the heavy dark, was quiet.

"You have such a talent for that," she said, and he thought there was a tremor there, though he'd deliberately picked a tale with a positive bent. "I thought perhaps my memory had cheated, but…"

"But?"

Chakotay waited for her to elaborate, but instead she blew out a sharp breath of air and made a sound that he thought was her hand slapping her thigh. "Well now, I guess it's my turn, Commander, if fair's fair."

He let the reference drift back into the valley of years it had come from and closed his eyes, leaning back against the cold wall and shutting out everything but the rasp of her familiar voice.

Later – much later, once they had run out of happy fairytales to tell each other, they resorted to the truth.

"Have you ever been in this kind of situation before?" she asked.

They were sitting side by side on the one remaining bunk. To Chakotay it felt as if they'd been talking for days. He had tried to keep track of the hours, but to no avail. The time faded into the darkness, along with everything else.

He tried to picture Janeway's face as he formulated a reply. He hadn't spoken of this for a long, long time. "You mean imprisoned like this? Yes."

"Tell me about it."

"I don't think…"

She moved beside him. He felt her arm press against his. "Please. Unless – is it too difficult for you to talk about?"

Chakotay shook his head, though she couldn't see it. "It was a long time ago." He thought for another moment, working out where best to begin. "I don't know how much of my background was in the file that Starfleet gave you about me, but The _Val Jean _wasn't the first Maquis ship I served on. They didn't give me a command straight away – given my Starfleet background, I had to earn their trust. My first assignment was on a weaponised cargo ship called the _Star of Phoebus_."

"A weaponised cargo ship?" Janeway asked. "How did they manage that?"

"Badly," he admitted. "It was a bucket of bolts as it was and the additions didn't help. We had to operate the weapons separately from the rest of the ship's systems as they refused to integrate. In any case, they were forever failing. Technically we were only supposed to be running medicines to the colonies, but on our first trip out we received a distress call from an unidentified ship that seemed to be adrift not far off our course."

"Let me guess," Janeway said, dryly. "Ambush?"

"Ambush," Chakotay confirmed. "We didn't stand a chance. I was one of five they took captive. For interrogation."

He felt a tremor pass to him from her arm, and remembered that she, too, was no stranger to Cardassian interrogation methods. Perhaps it should be a comfort to him that she could truly sympathise with his memories, but instead the idea of her trapped in a place like the one he'd been in sickened him into silence.

"How long?" she prompted, after a moment.

"Three weeks."

"How did you get out?"

Chakotay raised his legs, pulling his feet up to the edge of the bunk and resting his elbows on his bent knees. The action pressed his hip against Janeway's thigh, but he didn't move away. The memory of those three lost weeks was a blur of pain that he'd always chosen to deal with alone. Here, in the dark, he was grateful of the chance to remind himself of her presence, as unseen as it was.

"They… went too far. Or at least, they thought they had. If they'd carried on for much longer, they probably would have killed me. As it was, they thought I was dead and dumped me with the rest of the trash. Luckily for me, their disposal methods were running slow." Chakotay failed to keep the bitterness from his voice as he added, "I guess they'd killed just a few too many Maquis in that particular facility that week. Too many to keep proper track of."

Janeway moved again, pressing closer. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "You don't have to tell me this. I didn't mean to-"

"No, it's all right," he told her. "Anyway, I came around before I ended up in the incinerator. I'd lost a lot of blood and was very weak. I hid for three nights. On the fourth there was a Maquis raid on the facility – a team, trying to get us out. I was the only survivor. That was considered a success, mainly because I hadn't told the Cardassians a thing. When they'd stitched me up and I'd recovered enough, they offered me a ship."

"The _Val Jean_?"

"The _Val Jean_. And let's just say that my hate of the Cardassians hadn't diminished during our little chats."

Janeway expelled a long breath. "Three weeks and you didn't break?"

Chakotay smiled into the darkness. "I would have. Eventually. Everyone does."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry that you've ended up here, Chakotay, in this place. I'm sorry that you're having to go through this again."

"It's not the same," Chakotay told her.

"No," she agreed. "No interrogation, at least."

"There's that," said Chakotay. "And I'm not alone."

[TBC]


	4. Chapter 4

Kathryn woke to the sensation of movement. She stretched out a hand, feeling for him, expecting to find Chakotay seated where he had been when she'd lain down to sleep – his back to her on the edge of the bunk, level with her hip. He wasn't there.

She sat up quickly, fresh anxiety flooding her gut like a tidal wave. "Chakotay?"

"It's all right." His voice was somewhere in front of her, against the door of their cell. "I'm here."

Presently she heard the faint scrape of something against stone, and then his footsteps moved toward her. He almost walked straight into her and she touched his leg to let him know where she was before scooting along so that he could sit beside her.

"The hatch?" she asked, wondering what he'd been doing. When he didn't answer, she prompted, "Chakotay?"

"They've given us water," he said. "But there's no food."

"Oh." Janeway frowned, trying to ignore the hunger pangs she'd woken with. The amount of food they had been given had dwindled over the past few deliveries, but this was the first time they'd been given nothing at all. "Well. They seem to vary the times they bring us supplies. Perhaps this is… simply another example of their inconsistency. At least we have water."

Her first officer said nothing in reply, but she felt him shift, the noise of something rustling rising faintly in the darkness. A moment later, she felt his hand brush against her knee before moving to her thigh and resting there. "Captain, give me your hand."

She reached down, their fingers connecting. Chakotay grasped her hand and turned it over, using his other to deposit something in her palm. It felt like part of a slice of the dry, yeastless bread that had been a staple of their diet in captivity.

"I thought you said…"

"An old Maquis habit," he said. "Always save half of what you have until the next meal comes along. Just in case."

She broke the meagre bread in half. Chakotay had taken his hand from her thigh, but she reached for it again, connecting with his back, moving to his shoulder and down until she found it. This had become the norm for them, a light, unobtrusive touch that served as a substitute for sight. It was a gradual language, evolving its own silent vocabulary out of necessity and reassurance in a quest to say, simply, _you are not alone_.

"No, you eat it, Captain," Chakotay said, as she tried to give him some of the bread back.

"I can't take all of it. You've got to eat."

"There's more of me than there is of you," he said. "I can afford to lose a few more pounds. I doubt they're intending to starve us. I can wait."

"Please, Chakotay."

Eventually he relented, accepting the bread. They each ate slowly, making the bread's stale taste last long in their mouths.

"Are you tired?" she asked, some time later. "Do you want to sleep?"

"Not at the moment."

Kathryn sighed. She had dreamed of an open meadow in spring, vibrant with leaf and flower. It returned to her now, not in images but in the fleeting sense of open air, so that reality seemed doubly oppressive. The dark silence rose up, threatening to choke her, and she fought to swallow back the sensation.

"How long do you think we've been here, Chakotay?" she asked. "A week? A month? A day?"

"I don't know. More than a week, I'm certain. Less than a month – possibly."

"I keep thinking of _Voyager_," she admitted. "Part of me hopes they're still looking for us. But another part…"

"I know."

"They can't look for us forever. They have to carry on."

"Tuvok will know that."

"Yes," Janeway said, dryly, "but what about the rest of the crew? Remember last time…"

Chakotay chuckled, a deep, throaty sound that made her smile. "Actually," he said, "I've been trying not to."

Surprise made her turn toward him as if she'd be able to see his face. "What do you mean?"

She could imagine his shrug as he said, with amusement, "I'm not sure what to think of the cosmic irony that we were rescued from paradise only to end up here a few years later."

"Well, yes," she conceded. "I suppose there is that." And then, a few minutes later, "Is that really how you saw it? Paradise?"

Chakotay said nothing for a while. "It was a beautiful place, Kathryn. I'm not saying that I would have chosen to be there if not for the circumstances, but recent experience has demonstrated that there are far worse places to end up."

Kathryn lifted a hand to push her hair behind her ears. It was greasy, filthy with the unavoidable dirt that lurked around them so that it hung in lank strands that grew increasingly matted no matter how many times she tried to comb it out with her fingers. "Can't argue with that," she muttered. "What I wouldn't give to beam that bathtub of yours in here right now."

His quiet laughter filled the room with a light she couldn't see. "It wouldn't fit," he pointed out. "I'd be forced into a corner so tight I'd asphyxiate. Just so you could enjoy a nice relaxing bath."

She had a feeling that the solution to this theoretical problem occurred to both of them at the same time, because there followed a sudden, awkward silence. Into it cut a vivid slice of memory that Kathryn had spent years successfully suppressing. It was a glimpse of his face in darkness, slightly illuminated by the faint yellow light from their shelter, his eyes downcast to her naked shoulder.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"Do you ever think," he asked, softly, "of how things would have turned out if you hadn't been trapped by the array? How your life would have panned out if _Voyager_'s mission had gone exactly to plan?"

"Sometimes," she admitted.

"Where would you have been now?" he asked. "Still commanding _Voyager_?"

She considered the question. "Probably not, actually."

"Oh?"

"_Voyager _was always intended to be a vessel of exploration – cutting edge, too, when I first took her out. Starfleet might not have sanctioned a journey quite as long as the one as we ended up on straight away, but sooner or later she'd have been given a long-term mission."

"You wouldn't have wanted that command?"

"It wouldn't have been a decision I could have taken alone. If _Voyager_ had returned as scheduled, Mark and I would have married six months later, as we'd planned."

Chakotay shifted slightly. "He… wouldn't have wanted to join you?"

"I don't think, if he was really honest, that he would have wanted us to embark on something like a three-year mission, no. He had his own commitments that were based firmly on Earth, after all – he wouldn't have wanted to abandon them and I certainly wouldn't have forced him."

"So what would you have done?"

"Taken a command that meant staying closer to Earth. There are plenty of them."

Chakotay sighed.

"What?"

"I just can't imagine it."

"You can't imagine what?"

"You… Not being Captain Janeway of the _Starship Voyager_."

"It's all you've ever known me as, that's why."

"Not quite all," he observed, quietly.

"What about you?" she asked. "Where would you have been, if the _Val Jean_ hadn't been caught by the array?"

There was a pause. "Dead, probably. With the rest of the Maquis."

Her gut clenched. "I'm sorry. That was thoughtless in the extreme."

"It's all right."

"It's not."

He laughed slightly, though there was no humour in the sound this time. "No. I suppose it's not. I dream about them, sometimes. What it must have been like. How they must have fought. How I wasn't there to fight with them."

"I'm so sorry, Chakotay."

"Not your fault."

She puffed out a breath, leaning back against the cold brick. "You know, during those first few weeks in the Delta Quadrant, I used to have dreams that I'd found a way to change our history. One where we caught you before you even entered the badlands. One where the array sent us back where we came from. Over and over, every night, slight variations, all with the same result – that we were home in the Alpha Quadrant."

"I think we probably all had similar dreams in those early days."

"But however desperate I was to wake up and find that one of them had become reality… I'm so glad that I never did."

"You wouldn't change what happened?" he asked. "Even now? Despite everything?"

She swallowed, words she couldn't possibly say catching on the lump in her throat. _If it meant never knowing you? If it meant sending you – and B'Elanna and all those other Maquis I have come to know and love - to certain death versus the chance that you and I might still survive this place? _"I don't think I could. Would you?"

He found her hand in the darkness, his thumb tracing up and down hers. "No," he said. "I don't think I could either."

[TBC]

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

The light, when it came, was brutal. It scythed through the open door like a blade, slicing into the darkness with palpable force. They'd had no warning it was coming until the scrape of metal had alerted them – greater than the small movement of the hatch that brought their food, it brought Janeway and Chakotay to their feet.

Instantly, the light reduced any attempt at preparedness they may have made to a struggle to cover their eyes. After so much time in the absolute dark, it blinded as surely as the lack of it had just moments earlier.

Chakotay raised his arm to cover his face, trying to shield himself from the onslaught. The next seconds were confused, fractured. There was noise – not Janeway, from whom he'd heard a stifled cry as the light had assaulted them, but something else. Footsteps, a flurry of them, moving too fast to separate into beings, assuming what was coming at them was bipedal. Then something grabbed at him, grasping both arms and dragging him forwards. The motion pulled his arm away from his eyes and he was forced to squeeze them shut: inadequate protection against the onslaught. He struggled, flailing, wanting to punch but unable to see and aware that somewhere beside or behind him the Captain was in close proximity.

His weight wasn't what it had once been, and weeks of enforced inactivity had weakened him beyond the lack of nutrition, but Chakotay knew how to use what he had. He made himself a dead weight, throwing his centre of gravity low. To move him they'd have to put themselves off balance, which would give him an advantage…

"Chakotay!" Janeway's gasped shout shocked him as he realised she was in front of him and so must already be outside their prison. There came the sounds of a scuffle and he knew she was fighting. Then came the sound of a thump and she cried out, incoherent this time – nothing but a sound of pain, followed by her silence.

"Captain!" He lurched forward, following the sound of her voice, fighting his captors, struggling to open his eyes against the light in an attempt to force them to adjust. It was impossible - he was as blind out of their cell as he had been inside it. "_Captain_!"

Against the footsteps that forced him ever forwards he heard a faint groan that may have been her. Chakotay opened his eyes again, and again, and then again. Shapes began to coalesce in the dense white of his vision, shadows moving with confusing speed around him. He fought to distinguish Janeway among the fray, but could not.

Whoever was gripping his arms changed direction, forcing him to turn right so quickly he stumbled and almost fell. The light changed - it dimmed, though not by much. The hands on him did not let go.

"Who are you?" he demanded, "What do you want?"

There was no answer. Instead, something tugged at the filthy jacket of his uniform, and then came the sound of tearing. He struggled again, pushing against the hands that held him, trying to get away, but the tearing continued as he was forcefully divested of his jacket.

"What are you doing? What…" His sight was coming back now, gradually, helped by the dimmer nature of this light. He had the sense of another four walls, white this time, delineating a large space. The figures around him were still blurred – two either side of him, holding him still as a third stripped him of his clothing.

They started on his rollneck, ripping and tearing the fabric, the cold air rushing across his now-naked skin.

"Stop it," he heard a cry from a mass of dull movement on the other side of the room, recognising her voice immediately. "Stop –"

"Captain?"

"Chakotay!"

He could hear tearing and knew they were stripping her, too, even as his own uniform pants became nothing more than scraps of fabric, split and torn asunder as they were removed from his body. Then they took his undergarments, so that he stood there, shivering, naked and exposed.

His sight was still blurred, but he was no longer completely blind. Chakotay wrenched himself out of the grasp that enveloped his right arm and swung at the unclear face of the being that held his left. The punch was off keel and by no means his best, but it slammed into something hard enough to evince a noise of pain that sounded distinctly human. The being he'd hit stumbled back.

"Let her go," he said, taking advantage of the slight freedom of movement to lunge backwards, attempting to put his second captor off guard enough to land another punch. "Let her–"

The blow landed square against his unprotected ribs, hard enough to drop him to his knees, gasping for breath. He crouched, kneeling, forehead to the cold, hard floor, trying to recover. As he did he heard more movement around him, the sound of feet moving away, followed by the scrape of metal against metal and the bang of a door.

Silence.

"Chakotay?" Her voice bounced like a faint echo across the cavern of white. "Chakotay – I can't see you. Are you there? Are you all right?"

Chakotay pushed himself up and looked across the room towards an indistinct figure that he assumed was Janeway. He crawled toward her across a hard, smooth surface to see that she had her back against the tiled wall, knees drawn to her chest with her forehead resting on them. She was shivering.

"I'm here," he said, hoarsely. "Captain, are you all right?"

Kathryn lifted her face. This close his sight had returned enough for him to see that her eyes were closed. Her eyelashes rested against cheekbones sharpened through lack of nutrition and streaked with grime, and there was a bruise on her forehead – a product, he assumed, of the scuffle he had heard as they'd been dragged from their cell.

"I still can't see," she said.

"Your eyes will adjust soon. It's dimmer here."

"Is there any sign of what we're doing here? Why they've… taken our uniforms?"

He looked around the room, which was square and featureless apart from what appeared to be drainage outlets in the floor. He looked up and saw two pipes, about three feet apart, opening into the room from the ceiling. A sick feeling gripped him, but he chose to keep his fears to himself. If they had any foundation, they'd find out soon enough, and if she couldn't see what he could then there was no point in telling her.

"Chakotay?"

"It just looks like another cell, Captain."

"No obvious way out?"

"Not unless you count the way we came in, which seems as impenetrable as the door in our other cell."

"Well, perhaps-"

The sound cut her off. A hissing, bubbling sound. Chakotay found himself reaching for her, finding Janeway's knee before he remembered she was as naked as he was.

"Chakotay? What is it?"

He looked up at the pipes in the ceiling, heart thumping against his aching ribcage. Then clear liquid began to cascade from the ceiling – a steady stream from each of the pipes.

"Is that – is that water?" Janeway asked, trying to open her eyes.

"Stay there," he told her, getting to his feet. He walked forward, the fluid lapping at his toes. It was faintly warm. He held out a hand into the stream, and then brought it to his mouth.

"Chakotay?"

"It's water, Captain. It's definitely water."

"But – why?" she asked, incredulous.

"I'd say they want us to shower."

Janeway found her way to her feet, one arm across her chest, one leg bent awkwardly in an effort to hide her nakedness. Her eyes were open, but she was blinking frequently, evidently still trying to focus. Chakotay moved to her, eyes on her face though it hadn't taken much of a glance to note how her ribs were showing through the pale skin of her torso.

"This doesn't make any sense, Chakotay," she said with a frown that creased the dirt on her face. "Unless…"

He reached out and took her hand, pulling her gently toward the water. "There's a saying among my people, Captain. 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'."

Janeway's mouth quirked in a lop-sided smile. It was an expression Chakotay had recalled a thousand times during the dark days of their captivity, but none of his memories matched the reality of seeing it again.

"I have a feeling you may have misappropriated that particular saying, Commander, but even so…"

Smiling, he drew her to the water and she gasped slightly as it glanced off her shoulder. A second later she raised her face into it, lifting both her hands to sluice the grime away from her skin, the urge to be clean outweighing any embarrassment over her nakedness.

Chakotay stepped into the other stream, turning his back on her. He had the privacy of her lack of sight. It was only right that he should afford her the same.

[TBC]


	6. Chapter 6

Janeway stood beneath the water, feeling the grime of weeks slough from her tired skin. Over the pervasive odour of her own body, she became aware of the smell of something slightly chemical. It was only when she allowed the water into her eyes and felt them sting that she realised it was soap, pouring onto them with the stream. Kathryn was too relieved at the chance to be clean to even care about the sudden soreness in her eyes. Besides, the rapid blinking that ensued as they watered seemed to clear her vision.

Shapes began to move in her dimmed sight. She made out the glitter of water against a dull white background; the quiet movement of Chakotay's bulk as he showered beside her. He had his back to her, she realised. His form came into focus like the image of a distant constellation sharpening through a sensor adjustment. The first thing she saw was that her first officer had lost weight. Inevitable, of course – she had, too – and on such a big man it was especially noticeable. His hair was longer than she had ever seen it before, too: now wet, it brushed against his earlobes and rested against the back of his neck.

Janeway felt strangely emotional at the sight of him. They had spent so long now in such close proximity, reliant only on each other for companionship and sanity. He'd been beside her for days - weeks, even. During that time, his face had always been in her mind. Coupled with the sound of his voice in the darkness and the frequent, light touch of his hands, memory had taken the place of vision. Now, though, she realised that memory, however vivid it had seemed, had been inadequate. What she had seen in her mind when she conjured his face was a watercolour version of him – adequate, but not real, not whole. Janeway tried not to let that thought extrapolate in her mind, extending to what that meant for her memories of home. She focused on him instead. Kathryn etched a new portrait of him into her mind while she had this chance. Just in case.

Chakotay, oblivious both to the return of the Captain's sight and her musings, turned slowly, scrubbing his hands through his hair. As his torso came into view, Janeway heard herself draw in a sharp breath.

A network of deep scars was slashed across Chakotay's ribs, pale against the natural bronze tone of his skin. They were long healed, but the viciousness with which the injuries had been inflicted was so distinct, even now, that her blood ran cold to imagine their delivery. Knife wounds she thought, mainly, but there were burn marks, too: a remnant of those three long weeks at the hands of the Cardassians from which his only escape had been near death.

After a moment Janeway realised Chakotay had dropped his arms to his sides. Her eyes flashed to his face and found him watching her, eyes dark, water trickling from his hair. She wondered what expression was on her own face – shock, no doubt – because he studied her for a moment, eyes searching hers, before he smiled slightly.

Under his gaze, Kathryn suddenly felt awkward – reminded anew of her nude state. Part of her wanted to turn away, or make an attempt to cover herself, but these actions seemed both pointless and foolish. His sight had returned before hers: he'd already seen her just as she'd now seen him, and anyway, given their situation, worrying about something so insignificant seemed to be the height of frivolity. So she stood still and kept her eyes on his face, instead.

"We have to work out what we're going to do," she said. "When they come for us."

"You want to fight?"

She glanced down at herself – weak, unclothed, vulnerable.

"I think we have to be prepared to. I'd love to believe this," she gestured to the water still streaming around them, "is a prelude to our release, but-"

He nodded. "But."

As if on cue, the water ceased to flow. In its absence, the cold of the room returned with full force. The brutal drop in temperature immediately made Kathryn begin to shiver with a violence that set her teeth chattering. Chakotay stepped towards her, reaching out to rub his hands up and down her arms in an attempt to warm her.

The door opened behind them and they both turned towards the noise. Six figures entered, but despite Janeway's returned sight there was nothing to identify them. Each figure was wearing a floor-length brown hooded cloak that covered every inch of their body and face.

"Look," Chakotay said, stepping in front of her with his hands raised as if to placate them. "Why don't you tell us who you are? What you want? We-"

The closest being didn't even hesitate before ramming home a punch to Chakotay's exposed solar plexus. He uttered a muffled cry and dropped to his knees, bent double.

"Chakotay!" Kathryn reached for him, but they were instantly surrounded. Something was thrust at her as she struggled, the same rough garment as her attackers wore forcibly wrapped around her by impatient hands. Then two of them held her arms, and a third produced a thin strip of black fabric.

She realised what they were going to do a split second before they did it. Kathryn had a moment to see that Chakotay was back on his feet before the blindfold was tied behind her head.

"What do you want?" she asked, still struggling. "We have no idea who you are or _what you want_!"

They dragged her out of the room. From the sounds ahead of her Janeway assumed Chakotay was being moved with her. They turned, apparently entering another room. Then, abruptly, she was pushed into what seemed to be a chair and tied to it. Something was thrust into her lap – it felt like a tablet of some kind, propped against her torso and facing out – but she couldn't move her hands to touch it.

There was a strange moment of quiet, as if all of their captors had stopped at once. Janeway twisted her head from side to side, trying to loosen the blindfold, but without success. Beside her, she could hear Chakotay, apparently trying to do the same.

Then, a voice came out of the calm around them.

"_State your name and rank."_

Kathryn's head whipped towards the tinny sound. The voice was not inside the room with them. It was being piped in via microphone from elsewhere.

"_State your name and rank."_

Janeway was still so cold that she struggled to keep her voice steady. "I am Captain K-Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship_ V-Voyager_."

Chakotay followed her lead, imparting the only information Starfleet personnel were permitted to relay in the event of incarceration by enemy forces.

"_Have you been given food?"_

"What?"

"_Have you been given food?"_

"Look, w-we have t-to-"

"_Have you been given food?"_

_It's automated,_ she realised. _It's not a person asking these questions, it's a computer._

"Y-yes."

"_All must answer."_

"Chakotay," she prompted quietly. "Answer the question."

There was a pause, and then Chakotay said, "Yes."

"_Have you been given water?"_

"Y-yes."

"Yes."

"_Are you currently in need of medical assistance?"_

"N-no."

"No."

Kathryn waited for more questions, but none came. A second later, they were being manhandled again, untied and dragged back out of the room and along the corridor, still blindfolded. The garments they had been given were heavy, but her feet were bare and she was still shivering – shaking, now, with abject cold. Janeway became aware of a faint hum – a distant rumble, somewhere above their heads. She focused on it, trying to pinpoint its source. They hadn't been able to hear it inside their original cell, or in the shower room.

Abruptly, they were pulled to a halt. Their blindfolds were removed, but their arms were still held so tightly that there was no chance of escape. She recognised the door they had stopped outside - it was the entrance to their miniscule cell. Janeway's heart plummeted into her aching, frozen toes.

"Captain."

Chakotay was standing directly in front of her. His eyes were moving over her face, as if committing it to memory anew. Their eyes locked, both understanding what was coming next.

Seconds later they were alone again, in the dark.

Kathryn stood, shivering, clenching and unclenching her hands.

"Kathryn?" Chakotay's voice asked, softly. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine," she said, annoyed by the shakiness she could still hear in her voice, "just as soon as I can stop this damn shivering."

She heard him move closer. Chakotay reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly against his body. She wound her arms around him, too, hugging back as she realised he was also trembling with cold.

"That was a Proof of Life display," she said, turning her face so that her cheek was against the rough fabric covering his chest.

"Yes," he agreed, his chin resting on her hair. "Possibly even a live broadcast."

"_Voyager'_s still looking for us."

He hugged her a little tighter still. "Yes. _Yes_."

[TBC]


	7. Chapter 7

His feet were almost numb with cold, but Chakotay could feel that the floor was wet. He noticed this at the same time as he realised that the cell was not quite as it had been when they'd left it. It, like them, stank less. Their captors seemed to have washed the place out. Not that he wasn't grateful for its relative cleanliness, but they could have done without the added damp.

Still pressed against him, the Captain continued to shake. Without letting her go, Chakotay moved them to the metal bunk, half expecting to find it gone and relieved when he found it in the same place. Sleeping in shifts, he had decided, was no longer an option.

Wordlessly, they lay down on the hard bench. Chakotay pushed his back close to the wall and then pulled Janeway to him. She pressed herself into his chest and then raised her knees. Chakotay wrapped one leg over hers, the tangle of their limbs sandwiching their cloaks between them and over their frozen feet. Her head tucked under his chin again, Chakotay could feel Janeway's nose pressed against his Adam's apple. He pulled his hood as far over both of them as it would go and rubbed her back with his free hand.

Slowly, gradually, Janeway's quaking lessened and then eventually ceased. Curled around each other, almost as close as it was possible for two humans to be, they generated a tolerable level of warmth. Chakotay felt her relax, her muscles softening as the taut violence of the cold left them. She smelled faintly of soap, the harsh tang of the chemical tickling his nose where her still-damp hair brushed it. He stopped rubbing her back and let his arm rest, still holding her against him.

Though warmer, they did not separate. Kathryn's breathing evened and stretched, until Chakotay thought she was asleep. He was approaching slumber himself when the featherlike movement of her lips against his neck startled him back into wakefulness.

"Chakotay?" she whispered.

He shifted slightly, raising his hand to smooth a few stray wisps of her hair away from his face. "I thought you were asleep."

"I thought _you_ were. I've been thinking. I think I know where we are. Trianine 3."

Chakotay spread his fingers against her back. "The Vorbrath mining colony? The one we ended up refusing to take on as a trading partner?"

She nodded against his chest. "Out there, in the corridor, I heard something above us. I think it was an engine of some kind. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't work out what. Now I think it was the Vorbrath thermodynamic engine. Remember it? It draws heat from the planet's core, converting it into energy to power their mining operations." Janeway shifted slightly, pulling away from him a little to lift herself up on one elbow. The space her upper body left as she moved chilled him.

Chakotay thought about it. The Vorbrath had been a bullish species. At first, Janeway had attempted to negotiate for some of the minerals that could be found at the colony – _Voyager_'s dilithium stores always needed restocking. But the Vorbrath had only been interested in trading for weapons. Then it had emerged that the Vorbrath's mining facilities were operated by slaves. After that it had taken the Captain about 30 seconds to close down the negotiations and set the ship back on her course.

"Could be," he said, thoughtfully.

"If I'm right, we're in the mines," said Janeway.

"It explains the lack of light."

"Yes."

"If you're right – if it is the Vorbrath who are holding us – there's no way that Tuvok would consider giving them what they must be holding us ransom for – _Voyager_'s photon torpedoes."

"I agree. It wouldn't even cross his mind to make that trade."

"But _Voyager_ must have requested proof of life – which must have been part of some kind of negotiation."

"Or," said Janeway, "that's what Tuvok wants them to think is happening."

"A double bluff?" asked Chakotay. "He lulls them into a false sense of security by making them think that _Voyager_ is ready to make a trade?"

"It's what I would do," said Janeway, "especially if I needed to buy time to pinpoint a location."

"And now he knows for sure we're still alive," said Chakotay. "So the next step…"

"…will be to launch a rescue."

"If you're right, that could happen at any time."

"It could. And in the interests of preparedness, I suggest we both try to get some rest as soon as possible. We'll need to be sharp in the event."

"Aye, Captain," he said. "If we're right and Tuvok's on the verge of an attack."

Janeway sighed. "I want to believe he is, Chakotay. I _have _to. The thought of being left here…"

In the dark, Chakotay smiled. Janeway was right. It was better than the alternative. She moved again, beginning to shift from beneath his leg.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I – thought I'd let you sleep first."

"Are you uncomfortable?"

There was a pause. "No," she said, a slight huskiness to her voice. "Not at all."

"Then, Captain, I suggest we stay like this. We'll be warmer, and if we're warm we'll rest better."

"You could be right."

"I am."

She laughed slightly, quietly – a small, inward sound that he sensed was directed at herself rather than at him. Chakotay felt her move back toward him, and closed his arms around her. He'd only intended to return her to her original position against him, but she must have already been closer than he'd thought, because a fraction of a second later he felt the unexpected press of something soft against the corner of his mouth, and realised with a jolt that her face – her _lips_ \- had collided gently with his.

They both froze. Chakotay heard her draw in a tiny, shocked breath, and then, with the kind of momentary clarity that he was rarely afforded, realised that he could feel Kathryn's heart, beating against his chest. It was thundering - racing with the sudden electricity of the unexpected and yet apparently not unwelcome touch. Chakotay moved slowly, tentatively, turning his face until he could feel her lips full against his, open the slightest amount though she seemed to be holding her breath. She didn't pull away as he parted his own lips just enough to take her bottom one between them. It was a kiss as tender as he had ever given – soft, warm and demanding nothing, and yet in that imposing, encompassing dark it sparked a sensation he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before. The kiss lasted only a moment before they parted – so brief, in fact, that if one really wanted to believe it, it would be possible to say it had never happened at all.

"Commander," Janeway whispered.

Chakotay breathed a sigh of laughter and pulled her against him, tucking her head under his chin again. "Captain," he said, in an answering whisper. "Go to sleep."

[TBC]


	8. Chapter 8

She woke first, momentarily disoriented – not by the lack of light but by the almost-forgotten sensation of being held. It was probably no more than a couple of hours since Kathryn had calmed her heart enough to shut her eyes and sleep – their imprisonment had consisted of frequent naps rather than any proper sleep cycles – and yet she felt the most rested she had in a long time. She was still tangled beneath the warm weight of her first officer's limbs. Chakotay, though relaxed in slumber, still held her as firmly as he had while awake. She could feel the steady thump of his heart and hear his measured breathing stirring above her head. Her face was so close to his neck that when she blinked, her eyelashes brushed against his skin.

After so many years of sleeping alone, it shocked her that she could feel so completely comfortable to be this enveloped by the physicality of someone else. Though that shock, it had to be said, paled into insignificance when she recalled afresh the touch of their lips, which should have simply given rise to a hurried apology, and instead had become a deliberate kiss.

_The soft drift of his breath against her cheek. His lips, finding hers – seeking them, wanting them. The slow and absolute care of it. The feeling of-_

She felt her heart rate tick up again. _No. No. Think about something else._

Janeway couldn't extricate herself without waking him, and so she lay still and cycled her mind through the hypothesis she had developed. The Vorbrath. At the time of their truncated encounter, she'd been relieved that _Voyager _had managed to remove herself from further involvement with relative ease. It had meant doing nothing about a slave system that Janeway detested, and that had left her with considerable guilt – but in all practicality one lone Federation starship had little hope of changing the political traits of an entire species. The best they could do was thwart the Vorbrath's intent to weaponise further. Their arsenal had been confined to small arms and short-range ballistic missiles that had kept their region of space in check but had no hope of competing with _Voyager_'s superior firepower.

That being the case, could the Vorbrath really have engineered what must have been a very sophisticated kidnap and extortion plot? Over the weeks of their incarceration, she and Chakotay had painstakingly pieced together where the moment of their capture must have occurred. _Voyager _had stopped off at a small planet on the far edge of a system of five planetoids, orbiting a weak sun. They hadn't intended to stop at all, but a small scout ship had dogged the ship's tail, begging attention. The race – the Do'rai – were friendly and open, curious about these visitors to their small patch of the universe. The crew had been invited to tour the Do'rai's various municipal installations.

The Do'rai had seemed as small and harmless as their homeworld, but they had strict protocols. If Janeway could not visit every place they wished to show off, then it had to be her closest subordinate. After some wrangling with Tuvok, a solution had been negotiated – two away teams, one led by the Captain, one by her first officer, the rest of the teams to be made up by security personnel and a single engineer. Tuvok remained aboard ship. The trips had passed off without incident, and the two teams had reconvened later that same evening, still on the planet, for a traditional Do'rai feast.

They both remembered eating and drinking. They both remembered looking forward to being back aboard their own ship, in their own beds. Neither of them remembered anything after that. Presumably something they'd ingested had been drugged, but as for how they were taken, nothing of their memories remained.

Kathryn realised that for her hypothesis to be correct – that they were back at Trianine 3, being held by the Vorbrath – relied on a considerable chain of assumptions. For one, that the Do'rai were in league with the Vorbrath, an alliance that would be, if she were honest with herself, highly unlikely. The Vorbrath were abrasive and unyielding, whereas the Do'rai she had met were uniformly the opposite. Secondly, such an alliance would mean that the Vorbrath would have had to leap-frog _Voyager_'s trajectory, strike up a relationship with the Do'rai, and persuade them to launch an attack against a species clearly far in advance of their own, all in the space of the two-to-three weeks it had taken the Federation ship to travel from the orbit of Trianine 3 to the Do'rai's front door.

Another aspect of her theory that seemed highly unlikely.

Janeway let out a frustrated sigh. The breath washed against Chakotay's neck, and she felt him react – a tremor of movement vibrating through his body. His arms tightened around her, but he didn't wake. Her frustration became reflexive: God only knew what was happening to her ship and crew, while here she was, lying in the arms of her first officer, doing absolutely nothing. Although 'absolutely nothing' wasn't entirely true, was it? Or at least it hadn't been, two hours ago…

Janeway's mind returned to a piece of advice she had received in command school. Captaincy training was not only tactical, but behavioural, too. It took skill and discipline to manage the personnel of an entire starship, and as recruits rarely began their Starfleet careers with the single-minded idea of attaining that rank, there were habits of familiarity that had to be modified.

_Before you do something, _the simple advice had run, _imagine how it would read in an official report._

Janeway had rarely, if ever, felt compelled to modify any report in her favour. She prided herself on her honesty to her superiors, and what that honesty meant for the trust the people under her command could place in her leadership. But if they ever got out of here… if she ever had the opportunity to sit at her ready room desk and write a report about this – well. That clean slate would effectively be broken in two, because she couldn't imagine any report in which she'd be comfortable admitting the breach of protocol that had led to her kissing her second in command.

_So much care, in such a brief touch…_

_He wanted to kiss you,_ whispered a tiny voice in the back of her mind. _Every bit as much as you wanted-_

_No._

_No._

A sound echoed into the cell behind her – the hatch, opening swiftly and something being pushed inside. The noise woke Chakotay properly – Janeway felt him jerk awake and then freeze as he registered her close proximity.

"Kathryn?" he murmured, sleepily.

The sound of her name from his lips at that moment made her disentangle herself from his warm hold as swiftly as dignity would allow. "I think they've given us food," she said, cursing the unintentional edge of husk in her voice. She found her way to the tray that had been pushed into their prison, her bare toes instantly chilled by the cold floor. Janeway could hear him sitting up; the rasp of his hand rubbing over his unshaven face.

She returned to the bench and sat beside him, holding the tray. Tentatively she felt for what was on it – the familiar shape of a carafe that probably held water, and a plate of the flatbreads they had become used to. Janeway thought that was all, but as she moved her hand, her fingers connected with something else that was also lying on the tray.

It was cylindrical, about the span of her hand in length, widening at one end. Janeway picked it up, turning it around in both hands, trying to work out what it was.

"Captain?"

"There's something here. A… device of some kind, I think. I don't know-"

Her fingers brushed against a button, which depressed under her touch. Instantly, a halo of blue-white light bloomed against her chest.

A flashlight.

[TBC]


	9. Chapter 9

Chakotay watched as Kathryn turned the flashlight over and over in her hands, illuminating their small prison with rotating slashes of cold bluish light. There had been nothing else on the tray besides the bread and water, so were they meant to guess where the light had come from and who had given it to them? Or was there some clue to be found on the device itself? This was what they had been attempting to ascertain for the past five minutes, though such a thing was ironically difficult. The light, though welcome, wasn't powerful, and the very illumination it provided made it hard to make out anything on its barrel.

"May I?" He held out his hand, and Janeway passed him the light. Chakotay held it still and ran his fingers over its stem.

"What are you looking for?"

"The power source," he told her. "I'm just wondering whether…" Chakotay felt an indentation under his forefinger and put his thumbnail to it, prising open a flap to reveal a small aperture beneath.

Something slipped from the space and fell. He hurriedly turned the light over, trying to follow the object's route. Kathryn caught it before it hit the floor. She held her hand closer to the light so that Chakotay could see what lay in her palm. It was a small fragment of paper, no more than a centimetre square, folded over on itself several times. The Captain glanced up at him before beginning to unfold the square. It opened out to four times its size – larger, but still miniscule. Sheltered in the centre of the four folds was what seemed to be a circular fragment of plastic, traced with faint gold lines. It was small enough that the tip of Janeway's finger dwarfed it when she gingerly picked the object up.

"Know what that is?" she asked.

"Looks like a computer component of some kind," he ventured.

She smiled, and the gesture lit the room far more effectively than the light given off by the flashlight. "It's the locator beacon from a communicator," Janeway said. "Which means I think we can safely say that _Voyager_ is coming for us."

Chakotay matched her smile, automatically reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder as he would have had they still been in darkness. Their eyes met for a second, before Janeway blinked and looked away and Chakotay dropped his hand.

"There's something written here," the Captain muttered. "On the paper…" she held it up so that he could see.

Chakotay squinted, trying to make out the tiny sequence of words. "_'Be ready'_," he read. "_'Get to the surface_'. Then there's a sequence of five digits: _4-8-1-5-3_. Does that mean anything to you?"

Janeway glanced up at him again, with an expression he didn't understand until she said, "It's the simple code we gave Tuvok before he joined your crew. When there was something in his communiqués that required a decryption algorithm to access, he'd include it."

"I see," said Chakotay. "Well, at least that means for sure we know who this comes from."

Janeway reached out and touched his knee. "He never had a bad word to say about you, you know. I read all of the reports he sent before the _Val Jean_ disappeared into the Badlands. Tuvok might not have agreed with your politics, but he always respected you."

Chakotay wasn't sure that he agreed, but that wasn't a discussion they needed to have – certainly not now, and probably not ever. He smiled. "It's a long time ago. Tuvok and I might never be what you'd call close, but I'd trust him with my life, as much as I'd trust him with yours." He nodded at the locator beacon in Janeway's hand. "An instinct I think is borne out by that."

She nodded. "If we are in the mines, it makes sense that they can't beam us straight out. As an isolated component the beacon's signal will be very weak and the transporters wouldn't be able to lock on through solid rock anyway."

"Which is why we need to 'get to the surface'," Chakotay agreed. "The ship's probably planning a fly-by rescue – no need to put more bodies on the ground if it's not absolutely necessary."

Janeway drummed her nails against the flashlight's barrel, her face turned toward the door to their cell. "'Be ready'," she murmured, repeating the note's short order as if trying to divine additional information from the words. "Typical Vulcan brevity…"

Chakotay looked down and saw Kathryn's bare feet, white against the rough floor. "If we're going to be making our way through a working mine we need to do something about our feet."

"Agreed. Suggestions?"

All they had were the capes their captors had given them. Chakotay fingered the edge of the material. It was coarse – rough against the skin, but heavy wearing enough to offer some protection. "I think so. Can you stand for a moment?"

Janeway did as he asked. Chakotay knelt in front of her and gripped the edge of her cloak in both hands about ten inches from its lower hem. Then he ripped the fabric apart, tearing in as straight a line as possible to give him a wide strip of material. This he tore in half, and then, from the fraying edges, extracted several long lengths of coarse thread. Gesturing for Janeway to sit, he crouched in front of her and lifted her right foot, resting it against his thigh.

"I've never done this before," he admitted, beginning to bind the Captain's foot, "but I've seen it done many times. I watched my mother wrap my sister's feet when she was a week old, just as she had wrapped mine when I was a newborn. It's just a bonding ritual now, and of course the wraps are just for show, but presumably in the distant past this must have been what my people wore on their feet."

Janeway said nothing as he tied off the first 'shoe'. Chakotay placed her foot back on the floor before beginning on her left. Still the Captain said nothing, and he looked up to find her watching his face with an expression that he couldn't read. Chakotay smiled, and she dropped her gaze to where his hands were working on her foot. Tying off the second 'shoe', he let her go, and she stood up.

"How's that?"

"Good. Thank you." She turned to him. "I don't know that I'm going to be able to return the favour, Commander."

Chakotay was already ripping a strip from his own garment. "There's no need, I can manage." He had the sense that Kathryn was feeling awkward about something, and turned away to busy himself with binding his own feet in an attempt to give her some space.

"I'm going to put the locator beacon back where we found it," she said, a few minutes later as he was finishing up. "I think it'll be safest inside the flashlight."

"Probably the best place for it," he agreed, standing and testing out his new footwear. Not perfect, but it would do.

Janeway had her back to him. She sighed, reaching up one hand to squeeze a muscle in her neck. "Now I suppose all we can do is wait. I think we'd better turn the light off, Chakotay. We don't want it to run out of power."

"Agreed."

Kathryn turned toward him, the flashlight still on. They looked at each other, and Chakotay was aware of some slight charge in her eyes, as if for a moment he could still feel that racing beat of her heart against his chest, despite the fact that they were standing as far apart as they could in that tiny space.

Then she flicked off the light, and was drowned in darkness.

[TBC]


	10. Chapter 10

The cell door opened: the creak of metal against metal echoing into the darkness. They were both on their feet in less than a second, adrenalin making them hyper-alert. But that was it – no more movement, no further sound. The light that had cut their prison in two the last time their door was cracked open was absent.

Janeway flicked on the torch. The entrance gaped open, a void within a void. She looked up at Chakotay and lifted her chin. He answered in a nod. '_Be ready'_, the note had said. Well, they were as ready as they'd ever be. She took point, slipping swiftly to the door and standing beside it, listening for any sign of movement outside. Whoever had opened the door had either already moved silently away or was waiting outside. She swung into the gap and checked left and right, but there was no one waiting. The corridor on both sides led away into a narrow, but apparently empty, darkness.

Kathryn paused. They had been given no map, so from here on in direction was a gamble. She moved right, hearing Chakotay pulling the door of the cell closed behind them. After that, he moved so quietly that she twisted her head, just to make sure he was still there. Her own makeshift shoes were silent against the rock floor of the corridor, and for the first time since she'd been stripped of her uniform, Janeway was glad not to have her Starfleet-issue boots.

Within ten feet they reached a dead end – a sheer stone wall that reared up in front of them. She flicked the flashlight up and over their heads, but there was no other option but to turn back. Janeway cursed inwardly, wondering how they were ever going to make it out of the maze of tunnels that must surround them if they had to rely on guesswork that would have them wrong at least 50 per cent of the time.

They passed the door to their cell. Janeway actually shivered, and then steeled herself. They were out of it now, and she'd be damned if they were going back. Somewhere, thousands of kilometres above their heads, _Voyager _was scanning for them. This thought made her gut twist, hope circling anxiety in a mixture far too heady for a stomach as empty as hers. She felt light-headed for a moment.

_Get a grip_, Janeway ordered herself. _Concentrate._

They reached a branch in the corridor and stopped. There was no indication of where either direction led. Janeway felt a sense of hopelessness inch over her shoulders and shook it off. Tuvok apparently knew where they were – he obviously had an insider in the mine. If he knew this place and thought they could do this, they could do it. It might just take a while… She shone the flashlight along each corridor, illuminating identical walls of rock lining identical corridors. _Which way?_

Loathe to stand still for any length of time, Janeway was about to continue straight ahead when Chakotay gripped her shoulder. A second later his lips brushed her ear as he whispered, "Look."

Chakotay lifted her hand, the one that held the flashlight, pointing it at the wall in front of them. Above her head, just inside the apex of the branch corridor, was a symbol – a crude, uneven cross that looked as if it had been slashed with chalk by a hurried, anxious hand. Chakotay looked down at her, the strong planes of his face cast in graded shadows by the torchlight. She nodded.

They took the branch corridor.

The next choice came at a T-junction. They looked for another cross, and found it lurking in the high hidden dip of a hewn rock. Janeway's heart soared as they turned left, moving quickly. There was still no sign of any other person down here. And was it her imagination, or were they ascending with every step? If they could continue like this, unimpeded and this swiftly, surely they could be out of here very, very soon…

She thought about how it would feel to breathe clean air again – to walk in light, to see the colour and movement of _Voyager_'s crew around her, their faces nodding and smiling as she passed. Janeway thought of Neelix's kitchen and for a second could almost smell whatever was constantly bubbling away in those huge pots of his – right now she'd happily settle for his infamous leola root stew.

They missed the next symbol. Or rather, she thought she'd seen it and careened ahead, caught up in the fantasy of home and freedom. But when they reached the next fork, there was no cross. They searched for it, but came up empty. The walls resolutely refused to give them a sign, literally or figuratively.

A sound echoed from somewhere – a clang, and possibly a shout followed by the sound of footsteps. Janeway immediately flicked off the torch and they stood stock-still against the wall, forcing their breathing into shallow, barely-there puffs. The sound faded away again, lost in the darkness. They waited a long time before it felt safe to put the light back on.

"We have to go back," she whispered, once they had. "We must have missed a mark." They must have, because the alternative was too miserable to contemplate. Chakotay nodded and they re-traced their steps.

They _had_ taken a wrong turn. What she had seen before was merely the white vein of a mineral left in the rock. The real cross was higher, still, than the previous ones had been. But it was there. She just hadn't seen it, up there above her head.

After that, she gave the torch to Chakotay.

They went on and on, taking turn after turn. Janeway began to think that they were being led in circles, that all of this was some absurd trick and that at any moment their captors would appear to herd them back into the cell again.

Ahead of her now, Chakotay moved with a grace that defied his size. He frequently paused to check that she was still behind him, as if afraid she would vanish into the walls when he didn't have eyes on her. They didn't speak unless it was absolutely necessary, and there was no other sound apart from the faint brush of their cloth soles against the rock. The tunnels seemed endless, an exhausting, confusing network of routes that all looked identical. The torch bounced light ahead of them in a circle that only extended for a few feet, beyond which was a wall of dark as palpable as the solid rock on either side of them.

Janeway, brain fatigued through hunger as well as exhaustion, had no inkling that these things were about to change until Chakotay stopped dead in front of her. She realised that the light was striking a different pattern, not following the same narrow circle that it had previously cast against the rock. The tunnel had widened, she realised – the void in front of Chakotay was far larger than it had been previously. From somewhere came the sound of water, trickling and dripping, coursing from above.

"What is it?" she asked in a whisper, stepping out from behind him, trying to see what was in front of them. "What-"

"No – Captain, wait-"

Chakotay's hissed warning came a fraction of a second too late. Janeway felt something give way beneath her feet, and suddenly she was slipping. She tried to throw herself backwards against the loose shale beneath her, but the ground was crumbling faster than she could move. She felt Chakotay's arms grabbing for her, one hand gripping her forearm, the other searching wildly for her waist. The flashlight tumbled and rolled away from them, casting circles against the rock in crazy chiaroscuro patterns. A second later she was on her back, plunging into an abyss she couldn't see.

She felt Chakotay trying to regain his grip on her as she twisted over onto her stomach, but she was slipping, always slipping. He kept catching her, only for his fingers to lose their purchase on the rough material of her cloak once again. There was nothing beneath her feet – she was dangling now, the sound of stones falling away below her, the sharp crack of them as they bounced against the walls echoing back ever more faintly. The only thing stopping her following them completely was Chakotay, straining against her weight on ground that was no safer for him than it had been for her. She could hear his feet slipping, and every time they did more stones shot down past her into the void. She heard him curse, his voice strained as he fought to pull her back over the brink over and over again and failed, every time – her centre of gravity was already past the point of no return. She scrabbled with her legs, trying to find purchase with her feet, but there was none.

"Let go," she told him.

"Climb," he told her, though gritted teeth as if she'd hadn't said a thing. "Dammit, Kathryn – _climb_."

Janeway tried again, lifting her feet, trying to heave herself forward, trying to find something - anything – she could get a toe to. She slipped again, almost pulling him off his feet completely, which would have sent both of them over the edge.

"Chakotay. _Let go_."

He ignored her, still fighting against the pull of gravity. Kathryn dug her fingers into the ground in front of her, but it came away in clods, crumbling through her hands and forcing him back another step as the ground beneath his feet disappeared.

The flashlight had stopped rolling. It had come to rest pointing towards them, throwing their shadows up against the wall: huge figures that somehow seemed as if they were embracing. In the faint light, she looked up at Chakotay's face, his jaw set in grim determination, drops of sweat picked out across his furrowed forehead, shining over the curlicue of his tattoo. His feet slipped again, slamming him down on his tailbone and sending another volley of stones cascading around her.

She stopped fighting. She let herself go, because she knew he couldn't do it. Janeway let her body go limp, knowing that she'd slip through his fingers.

[TBC]


	11. Chapter 11

It happened so quickly that he hardly had time to react. They'd spent what felt like hours walking through tunnels that seemed entirely identical – endless grey stone, broken only by the light he carried that barely illuminated more than a few feet in front of them. Chakotay – exhausted, malnourished, concentrating on keeping his ears open to sounds that might be coming their way and blinded by the repetitive nature of their journey – realised that his reactions were slow when he almost plunged headlong into the chasm that opened up before him. He should have turned to her then: right then, immediately, but he didn't. For some reason he took a second to simply stand there, momentarily frozen on the edge of the abyss, his over-wrought brain trying to adjust from tightly finite walls to measureless expanse.

By the time he heard her voice, it was too late. Janeway was slipping, skittering like a stone over the edge that had so nearly claimed him just seconds before. It was all he could do to catch hold of her before she plummeted out of view to follow the stones that crashed into the nothingness below her. The struggle felt like hours, but could only have been seconds. He knew he was losing her the instant he had her in his grasp: the quick slip of coarse cloth between his fingers.

He couldn't hold her. He couldn't.

"Climb," Chakotay ordered, through teeth gritted against the strain in his shoulders. "Dammit, Kathryn – _climb_."

He felt her trying, almost jerking him off his feet in the process. She looked up at him, her face pale in the faint light from the discarded torch.

"Chakotay_. Let go_."

He ignored her, the words of the absurd order in his ears. As if he would. As if he could. Chakotay continued to fight against gravity, desperately trying to pull her back over the brink to safety. The loose soil beneath his feet bucked and crumbled under their weight. He struggled backwards, willing his hands to maintain their grip but fighting a losing battle. Chakotay lost his footing completely and slipped to the ground, jarring his spine hard enough against the rock to make his eyes water, but still he didn't let go.

He felt her stop fighting. It was an instant realisation, like the sudden blast of cold air cutting through a hot room. One second she was struggling for life, and the next…

"No," he said. "No. Kathryn, _don't_."

She said nothing. Gravity took over, snatching her out of his hands even as he struggled to keep her there. His hands slipped along her arms, reaching her wrists, sliding into her palms, so nearly out of his grasp already…

It was rage, really. Something white-hot exploded in his chest, an abject fury he hadn't felt in years. He'd already lost his grip on her right arm as he threw himself sideways, his shoulder impacting hard with the rough ground as he rolled on to his stomach, closer to the edge. Chakotay felt the ground beneath him crumbling further as her other hand slipped away. By that time he was reaching for any part of her that he could grasp, his fingers finding nothing more than a handful of thick cloth. He didn't pause to get a better grip. She was already out of time and he was almost over the edge himself. Chakotay heaved backwards, rolling himself on to his back over the disintegrating ground, dragging her with him. He heard himself bellow – a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his gut – and even then he could hear the frustrated desperation in it. All he had hold of was part of her cape, but he held on for dear life, rolling away from the edge over the splintering ground, the muscles of his shoulders tearing beneath the strain. Chakotay felt something grip his leg: _Janeway_. He'd jerked her back up toward him just enough for her to fling one arm up and over him. Chakotay reached out with his other hand, gripping her under the arm and continuing to roll until she had inched her way back over the edge. With one final effort he wrapped his arms around her and rolled them both over and away from the edge until she lay under him on a patch of ground that was solid enough to hold them.

Beneath him, eyes squeezed shut and gasping for breath, Janeway was illuminated in the blue shine of the cast-away flashlight. Her face was peppered with gravel dust and sweat, streaked with the shadows of the half-light. Chakotay could barely breathe, but the rage was still there, resonating like a second beat around his ragged heart.

"If you think," he managed, punctuating each slow word with a painful, laboured breath, "that I would have ever let you go… then you don't know me at all. _Captain_."

He rolled away from her, anger spent as swiftly as it had risen. They lay side by side, catching their breath. After a moment he felt something brush against his hand, and realised it was her fingers. She laced hers between his, squeezing briefly.

"Thank you," she whispered. And then, louder, as she lifted her other hand and pointed, "Chakotay – look."

Beside them, built into the wall several feet above where they lay, were metal rungs – the start of a ladder.

Janeway sat up, turning to retrieve the torch. As she did so, a sound echoed from somewhere inside the tunnels. It was the noise of shouting – indistinct but nowhere near distant enough. The Captain was on her feet in a second, turning to offer him a hand up.

"Are you all right?" she asked, when he stood beside her. "Can you climb?"

Chakotay shook his head, the last vestiges of rage replaced with the urge to smile. "I'm fine," he said, ignoring the ache in the torn muscles of his shoulders. He didn't ask her the same. He already knew what the answer would be.

"Good. Then let's go."

Janeway went up first, ascending into a darkness broken only by the oscillating light from the torch she clutched in one hand.

[TBC]


	12. Chapter 12

The ladder took them into light. It wasn't natural, and the air was still thick and sluggish, but compared to the absolute darkness they had endured for so long the brassy, faded glow felt like liberation. Janeway pulled herself over the last rung of the ladder and crawled onto level ground, her entire body singing a chorus of pain that she tried her best to ignore as she flicked off the flashlight and got to her feet. A moment later Chakotay stood beside her, rotating his shoulders and flexing his arms, no doubt trying to ease a similar discomfort.

Kathryn glanced behind them at the shaft they had ascended, the feathered cast of their shadows – absent for so long – stretching back toward the void. It gaped, a wide borehole that led deep into the belly of the planet. It had almost claimed them both, and indeed would have, if not for Chakotay's determination. For now, the sounds that had startled them back into action had been lost in the maze of tangled tunnels that lay far beneath them. They could take a breath. They could regroup. It wasn't only this respite that caused Janeway's heart to spark with hope.

"I know where we are," she said, quietly, and felt Chakotay's gaze on her face immediately. She looked up at him. "When I toured the Vorbrath thermodynamic mine with Tuvok, they told us the facility had replaced an older antiquated system that had now been abandoned." Kathryn nodded behind them. "That has to be the original mine shaft. They brought us up this way because they knew it would be empty of Vorbrath personnel."

Chakotay nodded. "Makes sense. Although I won't pretend Tuvok's directions couldn't do with some work," he added, dryly.

Janeway laughed a little and watched as the sound brought a smile to Chakotay's face. The relief of their near miss had made them both a little giddy.

"Captain?" Chakotay asked. "If you know where we are, do you know the way out from here?"

Janeway rested her hands on her hips and grimaced. "Well, I'd prefer a map… but I think I can take us in the general direction, yes – and I think I at least know how to get close enough to the surface for _Voyager_ to pick up the locator beacon."

Chakotay said nothing, and she looked up to find her first officer watching her with open affection.

"What?"

He shook his head, and nodded his chin to indicate the familiar posture she'd adopted. "I've missed that," he said, quietly. "I've missed… you."

Kathryn cleared her throat and glanced away, suddenly flustered and annoyed with herself for it. She could have said, given that they'd spent more time alone together in this place than anywhere else for several years, that she didn't understand what he meant. Except that she did. In fact, seeing him here, in this greater light, it occurred to her that though to him she still looked like herself, to her he was significantly changed. It wasn't just the weight he'd lost, but the facial hair that was now bordering on becoming a full beard. She felt a sudden urge to put her hands to his cheeks, to reassure herself that the face she had so cherished in her memories was still there somewhere beneath it. But they had no time for such absurdities.

"Let's move," she said, instead. "They know we've gone - they won't stop searching."

Chakotay nodded, smiling again, although to Janeway the expression seemed to be oddly inward.

They kept to the walls of the tunnels – they were wider here, but still hewn from the same grey stone – moving quickly and as quietly as possible. The adrenaline of her encounter with the abyss gradually faded and Janeway began to be aware of her injuries. A persistent ache in her side suggested a cracked rib or two, and the rough rasp of her garment against her stomach made her realise she'd sustained at least a few lacerations as she'd dangled there over the sharp jaws of the deep. Still, the certainty she felt as to their location spurred her on. If she was right, they were so close to freedom it was almost possible to taste it. A series of lifts led from these levels to the surface, supported by access tunnels of metal stairs that ran parallel to the lift shafts in case of failure. If they could make it to one of these, they'd have a clear path of ascent – and even though their captors were searching for them, finding them would be a different story entirely. Even if the searchers correctly assumed their quarry had found a way out of the lower tunnels so quickly – which was unlikely – there was a vast area to cover.

The further they moved, the more activity they encountered. Fixed lights appeared in the walls, a warm yellow glow that belied the cold, stark reality of the rock around them. Several times they hustled to find shelter as movement disturbed the air ahead, and they ducked into narrower corridors that led away from the main tunnel, huddling close together in a motion that Janeway immediately counselled herself was unnecessary and yet did nothing to prevent. It seemed that after so many weeks of touch instead of sight, shaking the habit of physical contact wasn't easy.

They were lucky, right the way up to the point where their luck ran out.

Slipping around a corner, Janeway and Chakotay hurried straight into a party of three miners. The two groups froze, facing each other, and in that moment, Kathryn made an awful discovery.

Two males and one female – small humanoids dressed in dull grey work overalls, their thin, unhappy faces smudged with grime and bruises, their large eyes wide and scared. She had seen these faces before, with happier expressions.

They were Dorai.

Janeway turned to look at Chakotay, and the faint current of shock she saw pass through his eyes told her they had reached the same conclusion.

The Vorbrath used a slave race to run their mining operations. That slave race, it was evident now, was the docile, innocent, eager-to-please and not at all aggressive Dorai.

Kathryn looked at the three damaged people before her and felt a deep, penetrating shame. Her father's voice echoed in her head, the memory of a statement he had always been fond of quoting – an old adage he had endeavoured to live by, and bring his daughters up to live by, too.

_All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing._

She'd always thought of herself as one of the good people. She'd always tried to be. And yet she hadn't done anything except walk away when she'd found out this place was mined by slaves…

Chakotay moved to step in front of her, perhaps to stave off some imagined attack. Blinking rapidly, one of the Dorai glanced at the other two and put two fingers up to his lips. Then he beckoned to the two _Voyager_crewmembers, whispering something in a low, melodic language that even without the help of the Universal Translator seemed to be indicating they should follow, quickly. The other two Dorai reached up and pulled the hoods over the heads of the fleeing prisoners, concealing Kathryn and Chakotay's faces before assuming positions behind them.

"Captain?"

"Go with it," she whispered, her gut making a decision that rationality might have otherwise denied.

The group moved off, twisting and turning through passages, more than once passing other parties of workers who were too engrossed in their own tasks and too fearful of what they assumed were two Vorbrath overseers and their attendants to take a good look.

At length the Dorai who was leading them stopped at a sheer rock face, into which had been built a door. Looking swiftly right and left, the slave pushed it open and rushed Janeway and Chakotay inside. They all crowded into the base of a narrow shaft that housed a steep staircase, winding up and away above their heads.

The gentle alien pointed upwards, and then held up both hands, six digits extended, before following with another pointing gesture towards the steps.

"What does that mean?" Janeway asked in a whisper. "Six levels to the surface?"

The Dorai repeated the gestures, more urgently this time. It was clear they were to go, and quickly.

Janeway held out a hand. "Come with us." She indicated between them and then over her shoulder to the stairs. "Come."

The Dorai shook his head and stepped away. He repeated the pointing movement again. Chakotay rested his hand on her shoulder.

"Captain. We should do as they say."

Janeway nodded. "Thank you," she said, and then, uselessly, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

They left the three slaves there and began to move up the stairs, their bound feet mercifully silent against the ridged metal steps. When they reached the first turn, Kathryn looked down. In the dim light she could just make out the three faces of their saviours, watching them go.

[TBC]


	13. Chapter 13

Weapons fire slewed towards them as they reached the third level – a hurtling ricochet of crude projectiles glancing off the rock walls as they ran. It turned out to be a brief burst, the sound of angry shouts forestalling the attack, presumably the yells of a commander who knew what his quarry was worth alive, and the complete devaluation of that worth should they be killed. Chakotay risked looking over the rail, back down to the ground level far below, and could just make out shapes pouring into the shaft, followed by the clang and rattle of heavy boots as their pursuers began to race towards them up the steps.

Ahead of him, the Captain upped her pace. She'd been breathing hard even before, he'd noted, and Chakotay suspected Janeway was harbouring injuries she hadn't shared with him. His own legs were burning, the pain matching the tearing ache he still felt in his arms and shoulders.

Janeway glanced back at him, then shouted to urge him on. "Move it, Commander! Stay close!"

He bolted up the stairs between them, closing the distance until they were barely a step apart. Her concern was borne of the fact that they had only one weak locator beacon between them, housed in the flashlight still clutched in her hand. _Voyager _wouldn't be able to distinguish their individual life-signs, the ship would only be able to lock on to the beacon and any life forms in its immediate vicinity. Both Harry and B'Elanna had proven themselves talented at manual transporting in tricky situations, but getting them both out of there would be like flying blind through the Nekrit Expanse.

They reached the fourth turn. Under their feet the metal shook with the pressure of so many heavy, running feet. Chakotay's own were throbbing with each strike of metal against the inadequate cloth soles of his makeshift shoes.

Just ahead of him, Janeway shouted a warning. He looked over their heads to see another door opening far above them, more figures pouring in through the oblong of white light. The metal beneath them shook even more violently, and Chakotay had a fraction of a second to wonder what load it could take before he collided with Kathryn, who had stopped dead in front of him and was leaning over the rail. He came to a stop with his arms around her and she turned to him.

"We're trapped."

"We have to keep going up," he said, over the noise of shouting and running feet. "If we're close enough to the surface…"

She nodded, grabbing his arm and pulling his hand up to her shoulder as she turned to face the stairs again. "Don't let go," she shouted back to him. "Understand? No matter what. Don't let go."

He did understand. If they made it at all, this was going to be close. Fingers tight on her shoulder, Chakotay gripped her hip with his other hand and they stumbled upwards, away from one adversary and towards another. Moving in tandem was awkward and difficult, but right now their proximity was more important than their speed. They were going to be taken again, that much was clear – their only hope was that their captors would take them out onto the surface to put them in one of the swifter elevators rather than trundling them back down the stairs again. If they did, that would be _Voyager_'s – their – only chance. The transporter would pick up the locator beacon and there would be nothing the Vorbrath could do about it.

They were surrounded in seconds, the pale, blunt faces of the Vorbrath streaming towards them out of the dim light, their wide shoulders casting even wider shadows on the walls. These were obviously security personnel – no sign of the heavy, concealing cloaks here, these beings were all dressed in the heavy black uniforms that had typified _Voyager_'s earlier interactions with the species.

Rough hands grasped at them, forcing them apart. Chakotay fought his way back to Janeway, who turned as his hands slipped away from her. She reached out, grabbing his arms, then shaking off her attackers long enough to fling herself against his chest. They held on to each other, buffeted by the maelstrom around them, the torch striking him in the back as her arms bound to him like iron.

"Don't let go," she shouted again, her voice reverberating against his chest. "Chakotay, don't-"

He felt her being wrenched from his arms, the force of her grip pulling him along too, but behind him, hands were dragging him backwards. Chakotay felt their bodies separating, the many angry hands around them prising them away from each other. Kathryn's hands found his and he gripped her wrists, but as she was pulled further away from him out of his grasp, he felt her seeking his palm, trying to thrust something into it.

Chakotay glanced down to see the flashlight. Janeway was trying to pass it to him, trying to force him to take it from her as the Vorbrath succeeded in dragging them apart. She knew they couldn't hold on – there were too many of them to resist. She was trying to force him to take hold of their only escape route.

He opened his hand, feeling hers fingers slip from his, ensuring she was left still holding the torch. He let go.

"Chakotay!" Janeway fought, but they already had her by both arms, dragging her backwards up the steps, closer and closer to the surface with every second. "Chakotay – _no!_"

He struggled, but rough hands held him fast. In the last second before she was completely obscured from his sight by the rush of bodies, Chakotay saw a shimmer in the air. It passed through Janeway and two of the Vorbrath holding her, a ripple of energy casting blue from her core, accompanied by a faint, silvery hum.

[TBC]


	14. Chapter 14

_Voyager_ coalesced around her in a storm of colours and light, the familiar contours of the transporter room coming into firmer view as the transporter let go its grip. Tuvok stood several feet in front of her, phaser drawn and flanked by two similarly armed Lieutenants and the EMH. Harry Kim was at the transporter controls, and beside him stood B'Elanna Torres, the anxiety written clearly across the engineer's expressive face. Janeway wrenched herself out of her disoriented captors' grasp, leaving them to the mercies of the security detachment as she made directly for the transporter console.

"Harry, get a lock on Commander Chakotay. Now."

"I can't, Captain. We only just managed to locate you, and now-"

She waved a curt hand, indicating that he should give her space. Janeway took his place and searched for some indication of the man she'd left behind. There was nothing. The transporter scanners may as well have been searching a blank wall, which to all intents and purposes, they were.

"Dammit, Tuvok," she cursed without looking up as he came to stand in front of her. "One locator beacon between us?"

"I apologise, Captain. We had to do the best we could with the resources we had available. Our contact was only able-"

Janeway held up a hand, still using the other to operate the transporter controls. "B'Elanna, did you try enhancing the input protocols?"

"Yes, Captain. We boosted them by 80 per cent, but it made no difference. There's just no way we can penetrate the mines – there's too much mineral interference."

"What about using a proxy? There must be something down there that can relay a deflected signal."

"Nothing we've been able to find, Captain."

"Then look harder!" She became aware of the EMH standing at her side, medical tricorder in hand. "Not now, Doctor."

"With respect, Captain, you've been held in captivity for six weeks. In my opinion-"

"I assure you, I'm _fine_."

"I beg to disagree, Captain. Even a cursory scan has told me you're suffering from three broken ribs, multiple lacerations and, if I'm not mistaken, an early-stage infection of staphyloccocus aureus, which if untreated will lead to- "

"Computer, deactivate the EMH." The hologram's outraged face faded, the tricorder hitting the ground with a dull thump, bouncing once on the grey carpet before lying still. Janeway turned to Tuvok, her jaw set as tight as her shoulders. "What's our status?"

"We're in high orbit above the mining colony, Captain. The Vorbrath have attempted two attacks since they discovered your escape, but they are no match for _Voyager_'s shields."

Janeway spared a glance at the two Vorbrath security personnel as she headed for the exit. "Take them to the brig. The rest of you, resume your posts. And get someone to replicate me a damn uniform before I get to the bridge."

She barely had time to acknowledge the bridge crew, who all got to their feet as their Captain, feared lost, stepped out the turbolift. "As you were," Janeway ordered. "Tom, wait five minutes then hail the Vorbrath Superintendent. Don't take no for an answer: breach their communication protocols if you need to."

Paris's "Aye, Captain" was said to her back as she strode to the ready room. On her desk was a fresh uniform, as ordered. Janeway locked the doors and then sloughed the cloak from her skin, wincing at the strain this placed on her damaged ribs. Whoever had requested the uniform had also thought to ask for a package of sterile wipes: hardly akin to the bath Janeway craved, but better than nothing, which was the alternative at this point. She took five seconds to scrub under her arms and another ten to clean her face. There was still dried blood caked across her stomach, but no time to deal with it. She pulled on the uniform. Twice she had to pause for breath, the agony of her broken ribs becoming ever more pronounced with each movement - pulling the unusually baggy turtleneck over her head was almost impossible.

Back in uniform, zipped into her boots, she felt somewhat more like herself. By Janeway's count it had taken her four minutes to change, which left 60 seconds before she needed to be back on the bridge. Crossing to the replicator, she called up the specs for a wide black hairband that would both secure and hide the worst of her filthy hair – not her usual choice, but the Vorbrath didn't know that. Once she'd pulled it into place, she glanced in the mirror, noting the harsh lines the sparse style lent to her face – cheekbones sharper than ever, eyes flashing ultra blue from her etiolated face. Yes, that would do. Anything to give her an edge, especially at this moment.

She turned, hesitated for a split second, and then added, "Computer. Coffee, black."

Janeway downed the liquid as she crossed to the door, dropping the empty mug on the table with an angry clunk as she passed. By the time the ready room door was unlocked and opening, the caffeine was hitting her bloodstream, an extra, artificial jolt sparking alongside the rush of adrenaline bursting in her veins. She could almost ignore her pain entirely as she stalked back onto the bridge, uniformed, full of rage – and, more importantly, back where she belonged.

"Tom?"

"They're responding, Captain."

"Tuvok," she barked. "Every order I give from here on in is to disable, not destroy. Understand?"

"Yes, Captain."

Janeway positioned herself in front of her command chair, but didn't sit. She lifted her chin. "On screen, Lieutenant."

The alien face that appeared before her was not unfamiliar. It belonged to the colony's commander, a Vorbrath named Riktat, whom Janeway had previously met during their failed negotiations. If he was surprised to see her back at her post, he hid it well.

"Captain Janeway," he began. How very nice to see you back in our region of -"

"I'm not interested in small talk, Riktat," Janeway cut him off. "Return my officer. Now."

The alien tipped his head to one side, the criss-cross of sharp ridges that marked his forehead rippling as he tightened his muscles into a frown. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, Captain."

"You know exactly what I mean, Superintendent. Commander Chakotay, second in command of _Voyager_, whom you imprisoned alongside me. You are still holding him. Release him immediately."

Riktat straightened and then stood. He took on a swagger that only served to increase the temperature of the rage boiling in Janeway's gut. "I'm still not certain to whom you are referring, Captain." The alien made a show of putting one hand up to his chin, as if deep in contemplation. "Although – come to think of it, we did detain an intruder. Quite recently, in fact. He was attempting to leave, having infiltrated our mining operations." Riktat shrugged. "Our officers are ordered to execute such criminals on sight. Industrial espionage is such a problem for us. I'm sure you understand."

There was such absolute silence on the _Voyager _bridge that Janeway could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

"For your sake, Riktat, I really do hope you're lying." Without breaking eye contact with the alien, she addressed Harry Kim. "Ensign Kim, how many Vorbrath ships are in the area?"

"Five, Captain."

"Lieutenant Commander Tuvok. Lock phasers on the closest Vorbrath ship."

"Phasers locked, Captain."

Riktat clenched his jaw. "You wouldn't dare, Captain."

"Wouldn't I? Tuvok – fire."

"Aye, Captain. Firing phasers."

Janeway saw the Vorbrath commander's attention deviate from her face for a split second. She glanced over Paris's shoulder to see the explosion light up his console in a colourful display of computer code. Tuvok had disabled their engines, lighting them up like a firecracker yet giving everyone aboard a chance to reach the escape pods.

"Direct hit, Captain."

"Excellent. Target the next ship. Give me Commander Chakotay, Riktat."

Riktat licked his lips nervously, but otherwise he didn't react. "This is pointless, Captain. I can't return your officer to you – he's already dead."

"Wrong answer. Ready, Tuvok. Fire."

This time she saw the Vorbrath flinch as another of his ships' engines lit up the sky.

"I can do this all day, Riktat. _Give him to me_."

"I told you, Captain, it's out of my hands-"

"And I told you, Superintendent, that I don't believe you. Tuvok, lock phasers on the third ship."

"Phasers locked, Captain."

"Fire."

Janeway placed one hand on her hip. "Three down. Two to go. How are you going to explain the loss of your entire fleet to your superiors?"

"This is absurd. I can't give you what I no longer have!"

"A race that relies on slaves executing a potential free worker? I don't think so. How much is this one man's life worth to you, Riktat? Because somehow I think it's worth more to me. Lock phasers, Tuvok."

"Phasers locked, Captain."

"Fire."

"All of this could have been avoided!" Riktat shouted, flinging up his hands as another of his ships took heavy damage. "All we wanted was two of your photon torpedoes. That was all! You wouldn't even have missed them!"

Disgust rolled over her, coupled with an intense desire to just _have this done_. "You want torpedoes, Riktat? Fine. I'll give you a torpedo. Tuvok, load torpedo bay one. Lock on to the colony's command centre. Disregard my previous order. Make it a dead centre hit."

There was a brief pause, and then, "Captain…"

She didn't even turn. Tuvok must have known she was bluffing, but she couldn't allow the Vorbrath to see any hint of it. "Do it."

"Aye, Captain."

"Prepare to fire. On my mark. Three. Two. One…"

"Wait!" Riktat shouted. "Just wait. He's not dead. Fire and you'll kill your officer along with the rest of us. Don't fire. Just don't fire."

The pulse of relief that sped through Janeway's heart barely even registered. "Hold fire, Tuvok. Riktat, you will bring Commander Chakotay to the surface and transmit his exact coordinates to us immediately. Understand?"

"Yes. Yes, I understand."

"Tuvok, maintain torpedo lock," she ordered, still staring at Riktat.

"There's no need, Captain," Riktat insisted. "We are bringing your officer up now."

"Better," Janeway grated. "Now. Let's discuss the Dorai."

[TBC]


	15. Chapter 15

He had no idea what was happening until he felt himself grabbed by the familiar pull of _Voyager_'s transporter beam. Chakotay re-materialised in the transporter room just as the doors opened to admit B'Elanna Torres, moving at speed and accompanied by the Doctor.

"Chakotay!" B'Elanna hardly paused to let him reach the bottom step of the transporter pad before she'd enveloped him in a bear hug. "Are you all right?"

He returned the embrace for a moment before pulling back slightly. "Yes. What about the Captain?"

"Don't worry, she's here." B'Elanna stepped away to let the Doctor move closer, medical tricorder already in the EMH's hand.

"Where?" Chakotay asked. "Sickbay?"

B'Elanna snorted. "You must be joking. She's on the bridge."

"The bridge?" Chakotay looked askance at the Doctor. "But-"

"Believe me, Commander, it wasn't my idea," said the EMH, his face dour as he checked the tricorder readings. "Well, it looks as if you've fared a little better than the Captain, at any rate. And when I say a little, I mean _a little_. Let's get you to Sickbay, and-"

Chakotay stepped away from him, heading for the doors. "Later, Doctor. If I were you I'd be more worried about Captain Janeway."

The Doctor's voice followed him out of the door. "I am, but – wait, Commander. _Commander Chakotay_! Does no one listen to me at all?"

Chakotay arrived on the bridge in time to see the final words in a tense exchange between Janeway and a Vorbrath he recognised as the colony's commander. _Voyager_'s first officer was astonished to note that the Captain had somehow found time to don a uniform. The viewscreen blinked off, and for a moment there was silence, broken only by the swish of the turbolift doors closing behind him. Chakotay felt eyes turn towards him as the bridge crew noted his presence. The Captain turned, too, her movements noticeably pained and stiff. Janeway's eyes came to rest on him, and he saw a brief but potent flash of relief cross her features.

Someone started clapping. Chakotay thought it was probably Tom Paris, but didn't bother to look - his eyes were fixed on the Captain. The ovation caught on as more crewmembers stood at their posts, applauding in an audible expression of their collective relief at the safe return of _Voyager_'s command team. He walked toward Janeway, noting the slight smile that lit her exhausted face as he approached.

"Commander," she said, when he was close enough to see the twinkle in her eye. "I can't help noticing that you seem to be out of uniform."

"Apologies, Captain," he said, matching her teasing tone with one of mock humility. "I will replicate one immediately."

"Actually, Chakotay, I think that perhaps- " Kathryn stopped speaking. She blinked once, her eyes clouding over. He saw the last bit of colour drain from her face just a second before her knees buckled.

Chakotay caught her before she hit the deck.

[TBC]


	16. Chapter 16

The water was warm and deliciously scented. Janeway sighed in contentment and slid deeper, feeling it soothe the latent aches and pains of her recent experiences. No one could argue that the Doctor's treatments weren't expert and that sonic showers weren't supremely efficient… but in her book, nothing compared to a hot bath. She'd already been in this one five minutes too long, but… she could steal another five minutes, couldn't she? Just this once?

Almost forty-eight hours had passed since the events that had seen _Voyager _regain its slightly battered command team, though to Janeway it seemed like less, partly because at least some of that time she had spent unconscious in Sickbay as the Doctor patched her up. The EMH had accepted her apology for her brusque treatment of him with, if not with quite what one could call good grace, than at least some level of understanding. She suspected someone might have had a word while she was still out for the count – Chakotay, probably. She smiled at the thought. They hadn't really had time to talk since their return. At some point they would both need a full de-brief and each would also need to fit in some proper recovery time. But, as was always the case aboard _Voyager_, there was currently too much else that needed their urgent attention.

Her door chime sounded. The Captain uttered a slight groan. That would be the Doctor with her latest dose of antibiotics to stave off the onset of the bacterial pneumonia he'd detected in her lungs. He'd wanted her to go to Sickbay to have it administered, but she had bargained him down to making it a house call so that she could get some rest and catch up on some reports. This was why she should have been out of the tub ten minutes ago…

"Come in!" she called as she reluctantly stood and reached for a towel. She heard the doors hush open and shut, and then a brief silence.

"Captain?"

She was surprised by the unexpected voice. "Chakotay?"

"I'm sorry – is this a bad time?"

Janeway stepped out of the bath and hurriedly towelled herself before grabbing her robe. "Ah - no, no, it's fine. Sorry, I'm expecting the Doctor. I thought you'd be him."

"Yes – I know. He's deputised me for the evening."

Tying her robe and throwing a fresh towel over her wet hair, she moved to the bathroom doorway to see Chakotay, in uniform, standing uncertainly in the dimmed light of her quarters. "Sorry?"

Her first officer held up a hypospray. "I said I was coming this way anyway. But – it wasn't anything very urgent, other than the meds, so I can leave them with you and just…" he indicated the door.

Janeway smiled, beginning to rub her hair dry. "It's fine," she told him, laughing a little. "I think it's safe to say that you've already seen me at my worst, Commander. Take a seat. Would you like something to drink? Have you eaten?"

Chakotay crossed to the sofa beneath her window as she dropped the towel over the side of the bath and then went to the replicator.

"Tea would be lovely. But yes, I've eaten, thank you – Neelix seems determined to feed me every 30 minutes. He keeps sending me food parcels. I think he's tracking my combadge, because wherever I am, something edible will suddenly materialise beside me."

Janeway laughed, replicating his tea and her coffee before moving to take a seat beside him. "Yes – he's doing the same for me. Not that I'm complaining." She sighed. "An experience like that does wonders for making you appreciate what you have, doesn't it?"

Chakotay smiled and sipped his tea. "It does. And speaking of appreciation – one reason I'm here is to thank you."

She raised an eyebrow in question.

"I hear you threw some pretty heavy punches to get me out of there," he explained. "Members of the bridge crew keep stopping me to tell me their version of it. It's fast becoming a legend." Chakotay grinned. "I believe Tom Paris described you as – what was the exact word he used? That's right - '_magnificent_'."

Janeway hid her smile behind the lip of her mug as she looked up at him. "What can I say? Give me a bridge full of good people and a clear objective and I can do anything. Stick me in a dark hole, and…" She trailed off with a shrug, taking a moment to appreciate Chakotay's newly clean-shaven face as she leaned forward to put her mug down on the table.

"Well, thank you, Captain. Your _magnificent_ efforts are much appreciated," he teased, as she rolled her eyes. "How are you feeling? Have your ribs healed? You gave me quite a scare for a moment yesterday."

Janeway waved a hand, "Oh, fine, thank you." She'd been somewhat embarrassed to learn that she'd passed out in full view of the bridge crew. Thank god she'd managed to hold it together until she'd ended visual contact with the Vorbrath. "The Doctor fixed me up in no time. Although having said that…" She reached for the hypospray that lay beside her mug.

"Let me," Chakotay said, holding out his hand.

She passed him the 'spray and tipped her head to one side so that he could reach her neck. Chakotay took a moment to brush away the damp strands of her hair with his fingers and then pressed the device to her skin. Janeway heard it hiss as the medication flooded into her veins. Once it was done, Chakotay rubbed his thumb gently over her skin - a light touch that seemed to linger a little before he moved back. The moment left her a little confused and she leaned forward, picking up her mug again.

"How are our guests?" Janeway asked, taking refuge in duty.

Her first officer nodded. "Doing well. The Dorai we have aboard seem pretty content, all things considered."

She made a sound in her throat. "They're just grateful to be free and returning to their families. Families they should have returned to weeks ago, _would_ have, if I'd only taken the time…"

"You can't solve every problem in the Delta Quadrant."

"No, but I can at least try to do something about the ones that cross directly into _Voyager_'s path. If I'd taken the time to investigate, I would have known that the Dorai were the Vorbrath's slave race. If we'd known that – and even if we hadn't, if we'd just done something about it – if…"

Chakotay reached out and took her hand, prising it away from where it gripped her mug. "'If' is a terrible word, Kathryn. A word to torture yourself with. We've done what we can."

She shook her head. "We owe them so much, Chakotay. Without the Dorai slave that was willing to be a go-between for Tuvok, we'd never have made it out of there. She risked her life, and she wasn't the only one. They helped all of us, despite what a desperate situation they were all in, and even after they had been terrorised by the Vorbrath into drugging us in the first place. I'm worried that the Dorai won't ever be safe - that the Vorbrath will go looking for vengeance once their ships are repaired."

He gave a soft laugh, stroking his thumb over her knuckle. "If what I've heard about your display to Riktat is true, the Vorbrath will be too terrified to even contemplate crossing the dreaded Captain Janeway again."

She looked at their entwined hands. For six weeks, such gestures had been of vital importance to them both. Kathryn wondered how long it was going to take before they each cured themselves of the need to physically reach for the other. Chakotay seemed to sense what she was thinking, because he let go of her hand and laid his arm along the back of the sofa, instead.

"How are you coping with everything else that happened?" he asked, softly.

She finished her coffee. "Oh, you know - one day at a time. Or one hour at a time, even. I think I'm still processing it all. What I can't really get into my head is that we were only down there for six weeks. I could have sworn it was twice that."

He nodded. "I know, it's the same for me. I suppose we've learned first-hand just how subjective time can be. Not to mention how accustomed you can become to some things."

"What do you mean?"

Chakotay looked away, still smiling although the gesture had become somewhat hesitant. "I got into a proper bed for the first time in far too long last night. Went to sleep immediately… only to find myself wide awake just three hours later."

"Ahh," said Janeway. "Yes, it's inevitable that it'll take us both some time to adjust back into our normal routines…"

Chakotay shook his head. "It wasn't that. I opened my eyes… and I realised that for the first time in weeks, I couldn't hear you breathing beside me." He looked back at her with another quiet smile. "After that… I just couldn't get back to sleep. My quarters seemed too big. Too empty."

Janeway glanced away, slightly floored by the intimacy of his statement. "Well," she said, "I'm sure that's something I will have to contend with, too. When I finally get to sleep in my own quarters, that is. Haven't actually managed it yet…"

Silence hung between them for a few seconds, during which she became aware of two things: the accelerating beat of her heart, and the fact that her mind had taken her, unbidden, back to that moment in the dark when their lips had met in the whisper of a kiss so brief and yet so potent that she'd swear she could still feel it.

Chakotay, oblivious, got to his feet. "Well, Captain – I think that's my cue to leave you to get a decent night's sleep." He smiled down at her and began to head for the door.

Kathryn stood too, hugging herself tightly, wishing she were in her uniform and not just her bath robe. "Commander… Wait…"

He stopped and turned as she moved a little towards him.

She took a breath, trying to find the right words. "Chakotay… I think, perhaps – that there might be some aspects of our experience in that cell that… need discussing. As your Captain, I'm aware that my conduct may not always have been completely-" She stopped talking. Chakotay was slowly shaking his head. "What?"

He stepped closer and smiled down at her. "Is this… about the kiss?"

She blinked. "Yes. As I said, I'm aware that-"

"I knew you'd be worrying about that," he cut her off, reaching out to place his hands on her arms, pulling her a little closer. "Kathryn_… _It was just a kiss. Hardly that, even. It's nothing to worry about. We were in awful circumstances. Circumstances that we got through, in one piece – together." He smiled, the amusement in his eyes overlaying something else that she couldn't quite define. "Stop beating yourself up about nothing. It's already forgotten. Get some sleep."

Janeway choked off the sudden pulse in her heart with a smile. "What would I do without you, Chakotay?"

"Spend more time falling down mineshafts, for one thing."

She laughed. The sound resolved into a sigh, and then a warm smile. "Good night, Commander."

"Good night, Captain. Sleep well."

A moment later the door shut behind him. Janeway stood still for a moment, the hum of _Voyager_'s familiar form of silence rising around her. Then she turned and began to wander back towards her window, her gaze roving from star to passing star as the pinpricks of lights smudged tiny flare-bright trails in the ship's speeding wake.

It seemed to take her a very long time to cross the floor.

[END] [OR MAYBE TBC IF YOU READ THE NOTE BELOW.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Right. Here's the thing: if this was an episode, this is where it would end. So you could stop reading here – and if you like your fic to slot into canon, then that's what you should do. If not, then read on – there's one more little chapter to come for you. So for those of you in the latter camp, read on…


	17. Chapter 17

Her door closed behind him. Chakotay stopped for a second, taking in a deep breath and with it the last vestiges of her perfume. It had brought him up short, walking into her quarters to find it so sweetly fragranced. Janeway never wore scent on duty and so for him, it had been deeply sensual to enter her rooms and experience something that felt like such a private part of her life. When he'd discovered that he'd also caught Kathryn in the bath, Chakotay had been eager to beat a swift retreat. But she'd seemed so relaxed about him being there – happy, even, to see him – that it hadn't been difficult to accept her invitation to stay, especially given how beautiful she'd looked at that moment. Flushed, tousled, laughing – it was a sight so different to the deathly pale woman who had been in so much pain that she'd crashed out of consciousness and into his arms a day ago.

Chakotay pinched a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and began the short walk to his own quarters. Of course he'd been lying to her when he'd said that kiss was already forgotten. He didn't think he'd ever forget it, as brief as it had been. And, when he had told her that his sleep had been interrupted by the absence of her breathing, what Chakotay had elected to omit was how, in those waking moments, he had also missed feeling the weight of her tangled against him. They had slept like that for less than a full night, but that was the sensation that had remained with him – the feel of her head under his chin, of her legs tucked between his, her arms around him – the feeling that they were two pieces of a puzzle that had been turned around too many times to count and finally found the correct way to fit together. But what would be the point in telling her that?

He entered his quarters, somewhat exasperated to find himself in a situation he had experienced before and that Chakotay had thought he'd left behind so many years ago. This felt like their return from New Earth, when he'd realised two fatal things: one, that in those lost weeks he had let himself fall in love with her and two, that even if she felt the same, she would never dream of crossing that line with her second in command once back on board. It had taken him a long time to get past that, but he'd managed it. Or at least, he thought he had. The three weeks of their captivity had reawakened something he'd long buried and half-forgotten.

"Computer, lights at 50%."

Chakotay shrugged off his uniform jacket. He was tired, but wound too tightly to sleep immediately. He kept feeling the brush of her hair beneath his fingers, the softness of her skin under the stroke of his thumb. He sighed. What he needed was activity, not sleep. He'd been sitting still for weeks, it was no wonder he was jumping out of his skin.

"Computer, what is the location of B'Elanna Torres?"

"_B'Elanna Torres is in the mess hall."_

"Chakotay to Torres."

"_Torres here. Everything all right, Chakotay?"_

"Fine, I just… wondered if you were up for a game of hoverball. I need to get these old bones of mine working again."

There was a pause. _"I'm sorry, Chakotay – I would, but… I've got plans. Maybe tomorrow?"_

Chakotay rubbed over the back of his neck and nodded to himself. "Tom?"

"_Yeah,"_ B'Elanna admitted. _"He's got some new holodeck programme he's working on, wants me to check it out. But – maybe I can cancel…"_

"No, don't worry. It was just a spur of the moment idea, that's all. Enjoy your evening – I'll see you tomorrow."

"_You're sure?"_

"I'm sure. Chakotay out."

Still preoccupied by the need to simply be on the move, Chakotay headed for his door. He'd call by Ayala's quarters, see what he was up to. Even if his old second in command was busy, the walk to crew deck would give him a chance to stretch his legs and-

He stopped short as the door opened. Kathryn was standing on the other side of it, back in her uniform, hair still tangled and damp, her hand raised in the act of activating his door chime.

They stared at each other for a second, and then she said:

"It wasn't nothing. And it isn't forgotten."

Chakotay was momentarily lost for words. "Captain?"

He saw her swallow, the only indication that she might be nervous. Then her eyes flashed from his down to his chest and back up again as her jaw set. It was a motion he'd seen her make a million times when steeling herself in the middle of an argument.

"What happened in that cell wasn't nothing. I'm not being irrational. We have to talk about this."

He glanced over her head, down the corridor towards the turbolift and then back along the other way. As usual, their little corner of the ship was mercifully empty. "Come in."

She followed him inside and stood, her arms crossed over herself.

"I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were being irrational by worrying about it," he told her. "I understand why you would be concerned. But there's no need."

"Isn't there?"

He frowned, a fizz of frustration dancing in his bloodstream. He didn't want to talk about this. He just wanted to find a way to get past it. "No. What exactly do you think is going to happen, Kathryn? This command team has got past far worse crises than a kiss in the dark that lasted less than a second."

"It's not the kiss," she said, and Chakotay was shocked to hear the slight tremor in her voice. "It's what was behind it."

They stared at each other. He experienced, suddenly, an echo of what he'd felt when he had drawn her bottom lip between his. A throb in his heart, a crackle of electricity tracing his spine. The feeling that he was touching the very tip of something vast, something only encapsulated by a word so short and yet of such magnitude that-

She looked away and took a breath.

"I don't know what you want me to say," he told her, taking a step back to put some distance between them. "It was a _kiss_. That's all."

"That's not all, and you know it."

He threw up his hands, the exasperation that had tied his muscles in knots finally bursting out in a rush of words he would usually keep in check. "Then what? If I say, 'Yes, Kathryn, it was more than just a kiss' – if I say, 'Yes, you're right, of_ course _there was something – everything – behind it, because there was always _going_ to be, with us – because there has always been something behind everything where we're concerned, no matter how desperately you try to ignore it and there's nothing I can do about that' - what then? If I say that - what _then_, Kathryn? What do we do _then_? What do _I_ do then?"

Janeway shook her head, silently, her eyes squeezed shut and her face pained.

"Talking about this only has two outcomes," he told her. "Either it was just a kiss, and we forget about it, or it's something else, and it does the very thing that I know you are most afraid of, Captain, so here I am, telling you the only thing I can, which is what you want to hear, and the only thing that we can do about it, which I am trying my hardest to do. _It was just a kiss_. That's all. Let it go."

"This… is going to make things awkward between us," she said. "For a while, at least. We have to work out how to deal with it. Or it _will _become the thing I am most afraid of Chakotay, and that's losing you as my first officer. If not physically, then in spirit."

He turned away with a short laugh that bore a sharp edge. "It hasn't happened yet."

"I can't do this without you, Chakotay," she said, softly, the quiet, desperate honesty in her voice cutting through his frustration. "I can't get this ship home without you."

He exhaled, slowly, hands on his hips, and then turned to face her. "I will always be here for you. You know that."

"So what do we do?"

Chakotay smiled wryly. "If I could do something about this, Kathryn, don't you think I would have long ago? We wait it out. It'll pass. With time."

Kathryn shook her head. "You risked your life to pull me back over that precipice. You let me go when you knew it meant you'd be left behind. You kept me sane in that cell. Three weeks in darkness, Chakotay, and the only thing that kept me going was you."

"I don't know what-"

"It's not going to pass. It's _not_ going to pass. It never has, no matter what I've tried to do to make it. And the worst thing is that…" she shut her eyes, clenching her fists. "The worst thing is that I don't want it to."

The silence that followed her pronouncement was as absolute as the darkness that had permeated their cell. Chakotay stared at her, thinking that perhaps he hadn't heard her correctly. Kathryn shifted uncomfortably under his penetrating gaze, looking away into the shadows that sat at the dim edges of his quarters. He could see the pulse pounding in her neck, read her discomfort in her still-clenched fists.

"I don't know what to do," Janeway said, and he could see how painful the words were to her. "If we were in the Alpha Quadrant, we could request reassignment. We could get away from each other. It's what the regulations would have us do. But out here… I've tried to ignore it. I've tried to cut you out. But all it took was one touch, and-" she swallowed, hard, and then looked at him. "And you're right. There's nothing we can do about that. I can't order you to stop feeling the way you do. I know I can't, because I haven't even been able to obey the same order myself. So here I am, _asking _you what we do, Chakotay. Because I don't know how I go on standing on that bridge with you right there, remembering how it was to feel so completely-" She stopped.

Chakotay took a step forward, just as she turned away.

"So completely – what?" he asked, to her back.

She shook her head, her next words spoken mainly to herself. "What am I doing here? What am I _doing_?"

He caught her arm before she could bolt for the door, pulling her to a stop and making her face him, though she avoided his gaze. "Kathryn, don't go."

"I have to. I should never have come. I'm sorry-"

"Loved?" he said, still holding her tightly, the tension in his stomach wound so tight he felt sick. "Is that what you were going to say? So completely – loved?"

Janeway's eyes flashed to his, shock reverberating through them like the ripples on the surface of water. Then she blinked, a sheen of tears softening her gaze. "I was going to say 'wanted'," she whispered. "But 'loved' works, too."

The tension broke, splitting in two like a tree struck by lighting cast from the storm that ends a drought. They stood, inches apart, feeling the spark and blaze of something in equal parts destructive and renewing.

"You want to know what we do?" Chakotay said softly, pulling her closer. "We do our best, Kathryn. Just as we always have. We do our best for our crew. We do our best for each other. We do our best for ourselves. And we just stop assuming that the latter means we are neglecting the former."

She shook her head. "I don't know how to do that. This isn't-"

Kathryn trailed off as he touched the fingers of his free hand to her face, tracing along her jaw and then up over her cheekbone. Chakotay could feel her holding her breath as he brushed his fingers through her hair, smoothing it behind her ear and briefly caressing the lobe of her ear. He dropped his hand to her shoulder and pulled her gently toward him, dipping his head until his lips touched her cheek in a feather-light kiss and then lingering there, not moving away. The scent of her perfume washed over again and he had to force himself to stay still. He wanted her to turn toward him. He wanted _her_ to be the one to kiss him this time – to give in to this thing that pulled between them, stronger than anything he'd ever felt before. Chakotay felt a brief sigh escape her lips. Her hands came to rest on his chest.

She pushed him away.

He felt the pressure - gentle, demanding - and his heart plummeted, the anticipation in his gut turning into a sour wave of disappointment. He looked away. He would have moved, too, but she beat him to it. Kathryn lifted her hands to his face, one on each cheek, turning him back to face her so that she could look into his eyes, her fingers stroking over his skin. Then, in one fluid movement, she raised herself up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.

It was a sweet kiss – simple, really, and yet it detonated something in his heart – a sudden charge sparking a rushing flame that tore down through his core and exploded somewhere in a part of himself he hadn't realised even existed. Chakotay wrapped both arms around her and pulled her flush against him. Kathryn made a sound in her throat and opened her mouth under his with such a passionate lack of restraint that he lost the ability to think. Kathryn's hands moved to his shoulders, bunching his turtleneck into her fists as she clutched him closer. When they parted, breathless, they moved only far enough apart to stare at each other.

"Chakotay," Kathryn said, quietly, "I don't think there's any way back from this."

He let out a breath of laughter. "I think you're probably right."

She blinked, eyes still fixed on his. He could feel her heart, hammering against his. "Feels a little like falling off a cliff."

Chakotay smiled. "I'm game if you are."

Kathryn nodded. "Don't let go," she whispered, leaning into him.

He didn't.

[END]


End file.
